Eunoia
by StainedGlassSkyscrapers
Summary: "They met, of course, in a library." A chance meeting between two people holding candles amidst the darkness of humanity could be the start of something... magical.
1. Chapter 1

_"In a sea of strangers,  
_ _you've longed to know me.  
_ _Your life spent sailing  
_ _to my shores."_

 _-Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure_

* * *

They met, of course, in a library.

She was one of the new librarians, young and fresh to the profession but not the hardships of life.

He was one of the first patrons, equally young and hardened.

She was pushing a cart of books down the aisles, humming softly to herself. He was walking from the other direction, balancing a ridiculous pile of books in one hand that might keep him occupied for a few hours. The other hand held a book open in front of his face, obscuring his view.

She didn't see him coming, having halted the cart and clambered on top it to reshelve a book that lived on a particularly high shelf. The library had ordered rolling ladders for convenience, but they hadn't arrived yet, to her never ending petite chagrin. His long legs ate up the aisle, and his peripheral vision worked well enough that he managed to swerve to avoid the cart, but not one of the wheels that jutted out awkwardly, catching his scuffed Converse.

There was a feminine yelp and an only slightly less-than-manly shout, a great clatter and crash as the cart collided with the bookcase, and a series of dense thuds as books rained from the sky. Then there was quiet as the two unfortunate klutzes stared at each other wide-eyed.

She had her arms instinctively raised to block blows from the falling tomes, but the defense was needless because in a great and - unknown to her - uncharacteristic show of reflexes and chivalry, he had snatched her around the waist and yanked her out of harm's way… and into his unintentional embrace.

He stared down at her; she was of average height for an adult woman but still rather short compared to him. He absently noted that she was quite pretty in an unassuming way, with an oval face, a rosy complexion with freckles dusting her nose bridge and voluminous chestnut curls caught back at the nape of her neck with a tortoiseshell clasp. Straight dark brows and thin lips gave her a solemnity that offset her girlish features, along with big brown eyes that were blinking owlishly up at him as her cheeks reddened and she shifted awkwardly in his stiff grip.

"Um." She cleared her throat. "Do you suppose you could let go of me now?" Her voice; a surprisingly low and sultry timbre tempered by a crisp British accent, was equal parts amused and embarrassed.

He released her like she was on fire. "Er - sorry." He muttered as one hand awkwardly jerked up to rub the back of his neck; not knowing what to do with his arms now.

"No, I should be thanking you." She said dryly, already gathering up the scattered books. "You saved me from some probably very painful and strangely geometric bruises." She said, examining the sharp corners on one particularly large book that had landed right where she had been standing.

"Oh - uh - you're welcome..." He responded, automatically beginning to help her clean up the mess. As she leaned down near him, her name tag dangled in his line of sight and he noted her name, "...Miss Granger."

She too glanced at her tag, logically inferring where he learned her name and not appearing surprised. "Hermione." She corrected. "I know it's a bit of a mouthful, but 'Miss Granger' seems a tad formal for the man who just saved my life." She said with a teasing lilt to her voice and smile in his direction that was little more than a flash of teeth.

"Hermione." He repeated. "You were named after the character from Greek mythology, the daughter of Helen of Troy." He rattled off the fact without thinking, then winced. He could imagine his friend shaking his head and rolling his eyes, _nice job, kid._

But Hermione did not give him the baffled and vaguely disturbed look he had come to expect. She simply nodded, then commented absently, "And King Menelaus." The words came out grunted as she forcefully shoved a book back onto an already full shelf. He stared at her.

"What?" He managed. She glanced at him, eyebrows raised in response to his incredulous tone.

"Was I not supposed to know that?" She asked, a glint in her eyes. He quickly catalogued her body language - crossed arms providing a physical barrier against a perceived threat, chin lifted to convey defiance and confidence, rooted stance providing physical and psychological strength - and deduced that she was used to people challenging or doubting her intellect. He knew the feeling. Perhaps that was why they both felt the need to establish it when they first met people.

He spread his hands wide to placate her territorial subconscious. "I didn't mean to offend you. It's just most people don't know that information. I was only surprised." She relaxed slightly, and afforded his hands a slightly withering glance.

"I'm not a cornered animal." She groused without any real anger, lightly and unexpectedly batting at his hand. "You can holster your weapon, agent." She quipped.

He was flabbergasted. "How -"

She stood, holding another book, and dropped it onto the stack of books he was accumulating with a chuckle that came out more like a snort. "Your hand flinched towards your hip when the books fell, say where a holster would be; you reacted with reflexes that could only be acquired through self-defense training, a man of your obvious intelligence living this near Quantico could only be employed there, AND... You dropped your badge." She finished, dangling said badge in front of his face before casually tossing it on top of the books under his nose, undisguised mischief sparkling in her eyes. "Pleasure to meet you, Spencer Reid."

Spencer cast about trying to gauge what exactly he was feeling. Embarrassed, confused, impressed... He managed a sheepish grin. "Sorry. I guess it was pretty rude of me not to introduce myself. Morgan… well, my friend is always telling me to be less socially awkward and… not… do stuff like... that." He cringed at his verbal inelegance. "Or this." He gave up and sighed with a loud huff of air that came out a little like laughter. "I swear I'm usually a better conversationalist than this. I have an IQ of 187, for crying out loud." _Why did I say that?_ "And I don't know why you needed to know that…" Spencer closed his eyes and made a determined effort to keep his mouth shut. _For God's sake, I'm acting like a high school freshman._

 _Well, I was a twelve year old freshman. Not the best frame of reference._

Hermione simply looked at him, clearly fighting a smile. "Oh, do go on. This is rather entertaining." She japed. He glared half-heartedly.

"I don't know you Miss Granger, but I didn't think you were cruel."

She laughed more openly. It wasn't a bad laugh; not too loud or reserved, but genuine and unapologetic. But it still struck him as strange until he realized it did not sound truly carefree, but the escaped joy of someone that had seen and felt suffering enough to feel slightly guilty during times of happiness. He had heard laughter like that too many times; heard it from himself. He found himself wondering what heaviness was on this young librarian's shoulders, and if she would ever really laugh.

Quick, clever fingers snatched back his badge and slipped it into his pocket with a twinkle of dark eyes before relieving him of a few books. He looked into that young face, noticing anew the dark circles concealer couldn't quite cover that came from years of nightmares that lived in daylight, and the sparkle in those eyes that he suddenly knew used to be brighter. She turned back around to get the last books from him and whatever she saw in his face made her pause and the merriment faded from her expression into something vulnerable and tired, but raw. It was too intimate for the first meeting of two strangers, but he couldn't look away.

She sighed, a soft exhale only slightly more deliberate than her regular breathing. "Stop profiling me, agent." Her voice was gentle.

He didn't feel the customary embarrassed defensiveness at such a remark. He didn't even wonder how she knew that he was a profiler - of course she did. He only shrugged. "I'm not." And he couldn't decide if he was lying or not.

By her narrowed eyes, neither could she, and she said so. "I don't know if you're lying to me." She said with surprising even temper for such an inflammatory accusation. "But if you are, it's only because you profile so regularly you do it instinctively. And if you're not, it's because you don't need to profile me…" Here her face softened into something unreadable, "I think we're rather alike, you and I."

He smiled crookedly. "I think so too."

The moment ended sharply and abruptly with the shrill beep of his cell phone. He was instantly embarrassed - how had he forgotten to put his phone on vibrate in a library? - and swung his messenger bag around to his front and rummaged around in it before closing long fingers over his prize and forcefully pressing down the little tab for volume. He shot the offending device an irritated glare. He knew who was calling, and he was loathe to leave the company of the young librarian.

He looked back up into her understanding face. She gestured to the books he had left over; the books he had started with. "Let's go check these out for you."

They abandoned her cart in the aisle and made their way to the checkout desk in relatively comfortable silence: relative because he kept trying to come up with something to say and failing. All too soon he felt the slight warmth of their fingers brushing as she passed his officially borrowed books to him, along with a complimentary bookmark, and knew if he tarried much longer it would be telling.

Still, he hesitated under her knowing and maybe even anticipatory gaze, uncomfortable because he just didn't _do_ this - they had just met! - but entirely too tempted to throw his learned caution to the proverbial wind.

She smiled at him. "You should probably get going."

Feeling disappointed and not entirely knowing why, he nodded, stuffing his literary acquisitions into his bag, muttering what felt like an inadequate farewell of 'nice to meet you' before turning and walking towards the door, both cursing his long legs for hastening his departure and wishing he could go faster.

His hand had met the subtle grain of the mahogany door and pushed it open before he ignored his mental tug-of-war and spun around with resolve. He raised his voice slightly. "Hey -"

The words died in his throat at the dazzling smile she gave him. "I'm disappointed, doctor. You're a profiler, you should know we don't actually give out complimentary bookmarks." With that cryptic remark, she shot him a disarming wink before spinning around with a swirl of modest skirts and contrastingly wild curls and disappearing among the endless labyrinth of shelves.

He took a moment to get his bearings before reaching into his bag, grabbing the thick laminated rectangle slid under the cover of one of the books, and tugged it out. One side of the bookmark had a word and a definition printed on it:

 _Eunoia (n.) beautiful thinking; a well mind_.

He blinked at the unusual word that he already knew, before adjusting his grip and seeing his finger come away blue. He quickly flipped over the bookmark to see the slightly smeared message, 'My IQ is 188' followed by a smiley face, and a phone number.

He laughed.

* * *

 _"It was as simple as that - they met. As simple as only beautiful things can be beautiful, as only life-changing things, turning-point things, can be simple." -Cornell Woolrich, Angels of Darkness_

* * *

 **Author's Note: This is just something I've had in my mind for awhile, that I managed to get written out suitably well and suitably finished enough to entertain the idea of publishing.** **This is not my first story, or my first fanfiction, but this is my first fanfiction story under this name. So it's just the slightest bit momentous.** **I haven't decided if I am going to leave this as a stand-alone one shot or maybe let it grow naturally into a multi-chaptered story, so feedback would be appreciated.**

 **P.S. I find disclaimers patronizing. We're smart enough to know what belongs to whom.**


	2. Chapter 2

" _A voice said, Look me in the stars_

 _And tell me truly, men of earth_

 _If all the soul-and-body scars_

 _Were not too much to pay for birth."_

 _-Robert Frost, A Question_

* * *

When Reid got off the plane, he hailed a cab and went straight home to his apartment. When he got to his apartment, he immediately took a shower to erase the exactly 68 hours, 42 minutes, and 13.23 seconds of exploring the apparent dark underbelly of Midwestern suburbia and the exactly 5 hours, 27 minutes, and 38.7 seconds of travel time from his body.

He put on a clean outfit; he had arrived home midday on a weekend and wasn't tired despite the grueling case they had just closed. Then he scavenged his tiny kitchen and scrounged up a can of Spaghetti-O's he nuked in the microwave, idly wondering at the irony that he ate more like a child now, as a grown man with a full-time job, than he ever had during his actual childhood. He quickly threw together a stack of books to skim through while he ate and put on the TV to provide some white noise.

He had been sitting, eating, and reading for a good twenty minutes when he leaned over to switch books and jostled his bowl, spilling some of the lukewarm runny Spaghetti-O sauce onto his hand. He had barely glanced at the dripping rust-red liquid before a torrent of images marched neatly through his mind like a PowerPoint on fast-forward, each more brutal and visceral than the last.

The bowl fell with a shockingly dull thump onto the nubby industrial beige carpet, sauce and noodles exploding in an abstract spray with a flat wet splat.

He stared at the mess, and all he could see was red.

In less than a minute, Spencer had shoved on his shoes, savagely yanked his bag off the bed, and was out the door.

He walked with purpose but not direction, clutching the strap of his bag tighter and tighter until he could feel the gentler flesh of his palm giving way under the bite of his quick-cut nails. He squinted into the sun as much as possible, subconsciously hoping it would sear away the images branded onto the backs of his eyelids. He cursed, not for the first time, his eidetic memory and heretofore unknown artistic eye for detail. It was no gift when art becomes the beautiful colors on the bruised neck of a strangled corpse or the thoughtful composition of a staged crime scene.

He cursed, also not for the first time, his former addiction to Dilaudid. Spencer had always, not very poetically but very cynically, thought that being an addict isn't so bad, but being a recovering addict is. Because you will always remember how your addiction helped with the pain. And there is always pain.

And though you may forget the taste of a food, or the details of a person's face, you never forget the feelings attached. That's all memories are, anyway; a bunch of random dots of information with feelings drawing the lines in between.

And that's just if you don't have an eidetic memory.

Spencer eventually looked away from the sun, blinking away the glare but masochistically welcoming the burn, and realized that the brain he had just been cursing had navigated him to his favorite park in the area. It was small and hidden away amongst the concrete and buildings, but lush and green and peaceful.

His harsh march slowed to a leisurely amble down the paved path following the river which was little more than a trickle of water. He came to a small cleared-away patch of land set up with some picnic tables, benches, and chess tables. He sat down at one of the chessboards, letting the familiar sight of checkered squares fill his eyes and mind, letting the serene non-silence of the outdoors wash his ears of ghosting screams and gunshots.

After awhile, he felt his heartbeat and breathing regulate and he slowly shifted his bag up onto the board, relieving his shoulder of the burden. He flipped back the canvas flap and paused when he saw what was inside. He hadn't opened this bag since they had left on the case and had shockingly, nearly forgot what had transpired before.

He pulled out the library books and set them neatly on the chessboard before cracking open the cover of the topmost book. He withdrew the bookmark, rereading the message he would not and could not forget:

 _My IQ is 188._

New images filled his mind, ones of chestnut curls and chocolate eyes and flashing smirks. New sounds filled his ears, ones of bittersweet laughter and British accents.

He was smiling before reminded himself rather brutally that he never called her and she had probably given up on him, if she had ever given him a second thought to give up on. _No way_ , his scathing inner voice informed coldly. _She's beautiful and smart and available, and you're just some guy with too much brains and not enough brawn… or flexible hours. It's never worked out with anyone before, why would you kid yourself into thinking it would have worked out with her?_

Still, he could not rid himself of her teasing voice calling him 'doctor'.

"Dr. Reid?"

His field agent reflexes kicked in faster than they ever had in the actual field, his head snapping up almost painfully to see the very object of his contemplation standing before him, and for one wild delirious second he actually wondered if she had appeared out of thin air.

Then he noticed her outfit of choice (consisting of some criminally tight leggings and a too-small t-shirt, and _no stop looking at her body, you pervert_ ), the well-used cross trainers, and the iPod strapped into a mesh-and-spandex armband. She was breathing hard and bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet before settling into stillness. Graceful fingers were currently plucking earbuds out of her ears and draping them over her shoulder, and those bright dark eyes were staring out of a flushed, slightly sweaty face right at him.

To his eternal shock, his mouth moved and coherent words came out, not the least bit high-pitched or stammered. "Miss Granger?"

Her lips curled into a smirk. "You remember me?"

All of his immediate composure had vanished and he was back to his regular awkward self. He swallowed, quirked a grin and jerked up his arm to hold up the bookmark. "Of-of course I do."

Her eyes flickered to the bookmark and the smirk widened and sweetened into an almost bashful smile. "Ah yes. My know-it-all braggery disguised as wit."

"Is it true?"

She blinked at him, caught off guard. "Is what true?"

Spencer gestured with the bookmark. "Do you have an IQ of 188?"

She flushed a little and bashful shifted to embarrassed. "At last testing." She confessed like a child caught misbehaving.

He shrugged. "Then it's not bragging. It's just the truth." She smiled, surprised and pleased, and he smiled back, continuing this conversational momentum with a quick remark of, "I don't know if you remember, but my IQ is only 187 -" here she snorted at his use of the world 'only', and Spencer was baffled by how such an undignified sound could be so endearing. " - so that makes you smarter than me." He wondered how to put his next thought and decided to just be blunt. "I don't think I've ever met someone smarter than me. It's… intimidating."

Her expression pinballed between disbelief and disgust and settled on comical. "Intimidating? Me?" And her tone was such that Reid thought of the way he described himself, all the while picturing in his head his scrawny 12 year old self with a bad haircut, fashion sense, and truly horrifying spectacles. He wondered if she too projected an awkward stage of youth onto her current self-image.

(It would be awhile before he learned how accurate that profile was.)

She seemed about to protest his labeling her as 'intimidating' more thoroughly, before her expression changed midsentence. She frowned thoughtfully. "I said before that I think we're rather alike. So if you're anything like me… you're probably used to people finding your intellect intimidating and even off-putting, which can in turn cause you to be intimidated by perfectly normal social situations." Reid was struck by her candidness and accuracy.

He responded, "Maybe it's more that we become intimidated and even put off by ourselves, and therefore become uncomfortable in those normal situations because we've realized how abnormal we are."

Her frown was on its way to becoming a smile, pausing in a poignantly vulnerable moment between the two. "Now who's smarter, doctor?" She said softly.

Just like their first encounter, they found themselves in a moment of just looking at each other. Reid wondered if it was normal for two people to have such oddly intimate moments when they first met without finding it odd, before realizing he had just verbally accepted their abnormality. He decided that he had just never met anyone like Hermione Granger, even himself, and he wouldn't want her to be more normal for anything in the world.

The moment ended when the petite librarian strode forward and gracelessly dropped onto the seat opposite him. "So, doctor, what brings you to this neck of the woods?" She said, grinning at her pun referencing the scenery while he rolled his eyes playfully for the same reason. Then her question registered, and those images he had battled away came surging back to the surface, with claws and teeth. He visibly winced, and her eyes narrowed. Reid didn't know why that was unsettling until he realized he probably had never been profiled by someone outside the team. He was used to all of them reading him, but not this strange beautiful creature. He didn't want her to see inside him. He didn't want to pollute the breath of fresh air she was to him with his grisly existence.

He cleared his throat and looked away. "Just… a lot on my mind."

He glanced back at her. She looked almost… disappointed, which confused and enthralled him, but also understanding. He didn't remember the last time he had seen such real and true _understanding_ that wasn't unbalanced by pity or sympathy or pain, and the preciousness of such a gift robbed him of his breath. He wondered why he _wondered_ so much with her, but then, he supposed it was strange to be confronted everything you never knew you wanted existing in one person.

"I'll bet." She said. "I know what that's like." And he knew she did. They shared another time-suspending moment of equal empathy, before she broke the moment again with her resilient buoyancy. Her chin lifted and her shoulders straightened with resolve. "I also know that you can't rid your mind of what's on it, but you can distract it for a little while."

He lifted his eyebrows. "I don't think that's what most therapists would recommend."

She snorted again, and he found himself grinning at the sound. "Most therapists - not all, but most - are people who are trained to give advice to people going through things they could never fathom experiencing. A rather poor system I believe." She sniffed, before admitting. "Then again, sometimes you do need someone who can be reasonably objective, experience-wise." Reid acquiesced this with a nod. She wrinkled her nose. "And on the other side of it, support groups can be rather droll as well. Too many people going through the same thing together can have a tendency to wallow."

"'And when you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.'" Reid quoted.

"Friedrich Nietzsche." Hermione said immediately. "Appropriate, if a bit melodramatic for the point I was making." She smirked at him again. "Are you testing me, doctor?"

"I thought the point you were making was that therapy is pointless." Reid said, ignoring her - dare he say it, _flirtatious_ question.

Hermione shook her head, curly ponytail bouncing. "Not at all. I believe therapy can be extremely beneficial and oftentimes needed, _if_ you can find the right kind. and _that_ is my point, that every person is going through individual combinations of experience and emotions and there are too few broad categories for such complexities such as the human mind. To generalize is to trivialize, which renders the therapy pointless at least and dangerous at most."

"And you think the therapy I need right now is distraction." Reid clarified.

She looked at him seriously but not unkindly. "Not even warriors fight battles every second of the day. The most tried and true healing has always been rest, and you cannot rest until you stop thinking about whatever is causing your torment."

"You never asked me what that was." Reid said, feeling the truth of the word 'torment' and hating it but resigning himself to it.

She pressed her lips together, taking on that look of contemplation that he was quickly growing attached to. There was someone undeniably attractive about watching her think. "The polite and correct answer to that is that it's none of my business, but to be brutally honest and maybe a bit insensitive, I've had enough torment in my life..."

Reid was briefly, overwhelmingly guilty in the face of the horrors he dealt with every day, then she continued:

"...that I believe that we should cherish the rare moments of peace and happiness we get. There will always be more torment to be had, and more therapy to be scheduled, but for now, on this beautiful day, in a beautiful park, with good company to boot..." she said with another one of those playful winks he never thought he'd see again, before grinning widely, "Let's play chess."

"Chess?" He repeated dumbly, looking at the very empty chessboard between them. "We don't have any pieces."

She looked positively mischievous, "We don't need them." She gazed at him steadily, a fiery spark far too intense for mere competition illuminating the depths of her eyes. "Pawn to E5."

Reid's brain immediately graphed the chessboard, a million strategies forming in his mind. He smirked at her. "You really think you can win against me?"

"We've both probably won enough chess games to have the opinion that the concept of winning is irrelevant and frankly boring in the face of a good challenge." She leaned forward, a fierce gleam in her eye stealing his breath and giving it back all at once. She grinned wickedly.

"Let's have _fun_."

* * *

" _She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together." -J. D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew_

* * *

 **Author's note: Okay, then, let's see where we can go with this…**


	3. Chapter 3

_"I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary." - Margaret Atwood, Variations on the Word Sleep_

* * *

They played three games of chess. He won the first one, she won the rematch, and the third game ended in a draw after chasing each other mentally around the board for a good fifteen minutes. He had been loathe to leave her company, but that had seemed the logical time to do it. He was gathering his things when she casually mentioned that it was tea time and would he care to join her for a cup at her favorite local spot?

He had never been so happy at the prospect of drinking tea in his life.

The sun was hot on their heads, and the tea was growing cold in their cups, but they hardly noticed, so absorbed were they in their conversation. They would look odd to any passerby, a young man in rumpled clothes and mussed hair, face contorted in severe contemplation; and a young woman in athletic wear, leaning towards him with a challenging look on her face, sitting in comfortable wicker furniture outside a tiny unmarked building with a barely noticeable sign on the front door that read in handwritten calligraphy, _Miss Muffin's Teapot._

"You can't decide, can you?" The young woman said smugly, in a tone that clearly conveyed she was not really asking.

"Hold on, just let me think!" He responded, agitated. But he glanced at her and his face shifted ever-so-slightly in the direction of resignation and her pretty face lit with triumph. She began to laugh even before he threw his hands in the air. "Alright, you win! I do not - at this time - know what my favorite book is."

As she tried to shield her laughter by demurely lifting her tea cup and sipping from it with a smile and twinkling eyes, he added indignantly, "But let the record reflect that I was under duress! And I'm sure that with more time and the process of elimination, I could pick one."

"Duly noted." She smirked. "Well, whenever it comes to you, feel free to let me know." Her playful words were obvious in their disbelief that he could successfully complete that task.

"I will!" He said automatically, before picking up his own almost-full cup of tea and sipping reluctantly. He barely hid his mouth twisting in distaste.

Hers twisted in amusement. "Spencer, you know it's perfectly acceptable to add milk and sugar to your tea. In fact, it's practically cultural where I'm from."

His face turned pleased at her use of his name, but he shook his head. "It took me years to start drinking my coffee black, and I'm never going back. So I might as well start off drinking tea plain too."

"Do all FBI agents let their masochism seep into every detail of their lives, or are you just a special case?" She asked teasingly.

"Oh, I'm definitely the most hardcore of them all." Spencer said with a straight face, before they both cracked up at the obvious lie. When they finally calmed down, Spencer continued, "Okay, whose turn is it?"

"Yours."

He frowned. "No, it's not -"

"Yes, it is." She countered immediately. "And I know why you don't think I'm right, so let me walk you through it, doctor, I know you have trouble keeping up with me." She winked, and he only grinned. "You asked me what my favorite book was, and I said it was impossible for a bibliophile such as myself to choose. You called my alleged bluff, and so I challenged you with the same question, and the taste of your own proverbial medicine both counted as my question and the evidence that turned my hypothesis into theory." She paused for effect before continuing bluntly, "So, again, I am right. It is your turn."

Spencer rolled his eyes tolerantly. "Okay, okay, let me think." Then he smiled at her. "You _are_ right though, it's not often I meet someone that I have to keep up with rather than the other way around."

She looked down into her tea and cleared her throat. "Do you have a question?" Spencer noticed her cheeks were slightly more flushed than normal and grinned.

"Yes I have one... who do you consider to be the best philosopher?"

She looked back up, flush faded, and arched an eyebrow. "You just want to avoid the word 'favorite'. And that is so vague! What kind of philosopher? British? American? Greek? Religious? Political? Scientific? Contemporary? Ancient?"

He shrugged. "All of the above." He blinked innocently at her disgruntled look.

"I know you're exacting revenge for my book question retaliation." She chastised him. "But I shall be magnanimous." She sipped her tea and hmm-ed as she deliberated. "I could say Plato or Socrates…"

"But you won't." Spencer said confidently. "That's far too facile for The Hermione Granger." She gave him a somewhat startled, suspicious look at that, murmuring ' _the_ Hermione Granger, indeed' before shaking her head as if shaking off a memory and returning to her contemplation of philosophy. Spencer chose not to read into that much, he was enjoying their time together too much to spoil it with his morbid profiler's curiosity. There would be plenty of time later on to delve into their pasts.

 _Later_. He liked the sound of that.

"Hannah Arendt." Hermione chirped suddenly with a decisive nod that made her falling ponytail bounce.

"'Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.'" Spencer quoted automatically.

"A German-born Jewish philosopher that survived the Holocaust." Hermione added, not bothering to confirm his correct quotation. During the course of their conversation, the pair had made the delightful discovery that they did not often have to explain their thought processes to each other or filter their sporadic spouting of factoids.

"Why her?"

Hermione took a moment to gather the right words. "Well, despite the fact she lived during a time it was difficult to be any human, let alone a Jewish woman pursuing a career in the old boys' club of philosophy; her works dealt mainly with the concepts of power, tyranny, and human rights. I think that was very courageous of her despite the relevance of her time." She paused again, looking at him as if calculating if he was worthy to hear the next part. At last, she said softly, "I find her very relatable."

It was a simplistic, vague statement, but Spencer knew that she had just revealed something very important about her life. But before he could attempt to profile her, she fired off, "What's your favorite color?"

He blinked. "Really?"

She smiled and shrugged. "I want to know you." She said simply.

Spencer felt the warmth that had been radiating in the vicinity of his chest briefly intensify. "Blue."

She smiled secretively. "I like red and gold." She paused. "But I've always had a fondness for purple shades as well."

Spencer privately thought that lilac would look especially lovely on her. He cleared his throat to dispel the distracting thought. "Favorite… music?" He finished lamely.

She gave a him a look at the superficial question but smiled and answered, "I didn't listen to a lot of popular music when I was among peers in school, when most adolescents develop their own taste in music, so I'm still mainly influenced by my parents' generation." She prefaced. "So lots of classic rock. And my father had a fondness for Etta James."

"I take it they were Beatles fans."

Hermione laughed. "English youths growing up in the 60s and 70s? Of _course_ they were Beatles fans! My mum sang Here Comes the Sun as my lullaby every night."

He grinned. "My mom liked the Beatles too, although she would never admit to something as frivolous as enjoying rock music."

"It's nearly impossible not to have at least one opinion of popular culture without literally living under a rock." Hermione agreed.

"So how did you avoid the boy bands of the nineties?"

"Boarding school." Hermione shrugged.

"So, a _really_ big rock." Spencer quipped, proud when she cracked up. He had never made anyone laugh so much on purpose before.

"My turn again," She said, laughter still shimmering in her voice. "I've got one prepared this time. What are you interested in, academically? What do you like to study? But!" She stopped him as he opened his mouth. "It can't be related to your profession. So no psychology!"

He smiled, more of an upward quirk of his lips than anything else. "Well, I am _interested_ in psychology but my job makes it difficult to _enjoy_." She inclined her head in acknowledgment. He ruffled his hair absently. "Well, I have a Ph.D. in chemistry and engineering, as well as…" He trailed off at the sound of her giggles. "What's so funny?"

She smiled fondly. "You messed up your hair."

"Oh." He laughed it off. "It always looks..." The words died in his throat as she reached out and ran her fingers lightly through the hair falling onto his forehead, gently pushing them back into place. "...this… way…"

His world narrowed to the barely-there brush of her fingertips on his skin, the electric kind of warmth only felt from the touch of another human being and he almost believed he could feel her heartbeat pulsing in her fingers.

"Oh, I know. I'm no stranger to men with perpetually messy hair." Her perfectly normal, amused voice, almost too loud and clear to his ears, snapped him back to reality. He cleared his throat awkwardly and tried to fight down the heat rising in his face. She put her hand back in her lap and her smile turned shy. "But your hair wasn't messy the way it usually is." Her cheeks rapidly turned pink and she glanced away.

Maybe it was just his overactive imagination (also known as wishful thinking), the softness to her voice when she said that made his heart feel like a helium balloon and the warm, tingling electricity he felt from her fingers returned and charged the atmosphere between them tenfold.

He felt a grin fight its way onto his face without much opposition, and he felt he could have stayed there forever, with wicker furniture making imprints on his skin and the sun heating his hair and the teacup cooling in his hands, sitting across from one of the loveliest woman he had ever met.

Hermione began to subtly fidget in her seat, before consciously stilling her movements and looking him in the eye. "So, chemistry!" She said brightly. "I actually studied certain branch of chemistry for a long while, under a master chemist. But I suppose a more proper title would be apothecarist, given the focus on herbal and medicinal properties." She added thoughtfully.

Spencer's eyebrows shot up. "You like chemistry?"

"Yes, although I didn't pursue a doctorate like certain overachievers." She teased. He didn't respond right away. Instead, he laughed, a short burst of incredulous delight. "What?" She asked. _How are you real?_ Spencer thought.

Instead, he just smiled and shook his head. "Nothing." She gave him a curious smile but accepted his answer with a nod.

The brief interlude in their conversation was interrupted by the distinctive sound and feeling of a phone vibrating. Spencer automatically reached for his, but was surprised to find Hermione was the one checking her phone, a simple non-smartphone model like his, probably just for calling and texting. She briefly read whatever was on the screen before tapping out a quick reply. She slipped it back into her pocket and met his inquisitive gaze. "The work of a librarian is never done." She said laughingly.

Spencer took the opportunity to ask a question that had been growing in his mind throughout their meeting. "How did you get to be a librarian? You must have had the world available to you with your education and intelligence."

Hermione didn't answer for a long moment, and he briefly wondered if he had offended her, but when she spoke her voice was calm. "My education had a certain… intensity to it, and pushed me in one particular direction. When I graduated I decided I was not ready to be set on that path for the rest of my life." She smiled a little. "I wanted to explore a simpler existence."

Spencer examined the scenario of a young librarian relaxing a tea shop after a morning run and asked, "Have you found what you're looking for in life, then?"

"Now that is a loaded question!" She said, but then her face softened into something almost serious. "I used to think I'd never be intellectually and emotionally satisfied by just one thing forever, but… perhaps I'm getting closer." She didn't smile, but her dark eyes held something within them that made him catch his breath.

"How about you, doctor? Have you found what you're looking for?"

Spencer was ready to say something casual, but the wording of her question and the look in her eyes made him brave. "I've always felt that my what I do is extremely important, but I know it comes with a price." He impulsively reached out and touched her hand where it was resting on the table. "I think that I could use a simpler existence, too."

Her answering smile was like sunlight.

Yet another sweet moment between them was shattered by a cell phone, but this time it predictably was Spencer's. He glared at it as he read the text summoning him back to the office, but looked back up at her understanding smile and sighed. "I've got a case. I'll probably be gone for a few days…" His voice trailed off, unsure why he felt the need to tell her that last bit.

She nodded, then laughed and pointed to his library books and her bookmark still stuck inside one cover. "Perhaps you will actually call me this time?"

He nearly grimaced. "Well… when I'm on a case, it usually takes a great deal of my concentration, and I can't afford…" He cringed again, "Distractions."

This was the part where she got offended, or decided his job was too much trouble and he wasn't worth her time. He was surprised again by her response. She gently squeezed his fingers, warmth traveling from them directly to his chest. "Well, then." Her voice was soft. "Why don't you just text me when you get home? I'm always up for another chess game."

Once again, she left him without words. He found himself just staring at her, trying to memorize every freckle and eyelash, as she released his hand to leave money under her tea saucer for their drinks and to stand up. He quickly stood up as well, ignoring the fact that his legs were nearly asleep, and checked his watch, startled to see that they had been in each other's company for a good three hours. It felt like too short a time.

Hermione tipped her head back. "I almost forgot how tall you were as we sat." She laughed, and looking down into her pretty, smiling face made him all too aware of how easy it would be to just lean down a little and…

She stepped back from him, and he felt bereft.

"Well, doctor, here is where we part ways, for now." She said.

"Let me walk you back," He said hastily.

She smiled and before he could blink, went on her tiptoes and pressed her lips gently against his cheek. The world stopped. "That's very gentlemanly of you," She began, beginning the world with her again, "But I should like to finish my run, and you really ought to go."

Then she was gone from him, turning and beginning to jog away, running lightly and gracefully like a dancing fairy or some other magical creature.

He would have stayed standing there, rooted to the spot, when something came to him. "Hermione!" He called. She paused and turned. He grinned. "My favorite book is _In Search of Lost Time,_ by Marcel Proust."

She called back, "Which volume?" Because of course she would know it was actually seven books.

He shrugged. "I just start from the beginning and read until the end."

"A good policy all around when it comes to book, doctor." She said laughingly. "But as Frank Herbert said, 'There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story.'" He couldn't see her smile as well from this distance, but the knowledge of its presence warmed him. "And I have no intention of stopping this story just yet."

And with that wonderfully cryptic, yet perfectly clear statement, she ran off again. He didn't stop to watch her until he couldn't see her anymore, instead he smiled and turned away, beginning on his own path. After all, he would be calling her in just a few days.

He wanted another rematch.

* * *

 _"Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces_  
 _Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here_  
 _Here comes the sun, here comes the sun_  
 _And I say it's all right..."_

 _\- The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun_

* * *

 **Author's note: A bit of a longer chapter to make up for the wait. I had to drag this one out kicking and screaming, y'all, but I'm finally at a place where I'm happy with it. Okay, just a few business items…**

 **One, I haven't decided if I'm going to put magic in this story or not. If not, I'll probably construct a Muggle version of the events of the Harry Potter books while trying not to change too much of the plot conceptually. I've purposefully left it open ended in 'Eunoia' so that I can make that decision naturally as it comes. But I would love some feedback on that.**

 **Two, Miss Muffin's Teapot is a reference to a favorite childhood story of mine,** _ **Muffin Mouse's New House**_ **. It's really an adorable little book. Also, I hope you caught all those little Harry Potter references to Hermione's past (They weren't exactly hidden so you probably did).**

 **Three, Hannah Arendt? A strong woman of academia protesting against tyranny during the reign of Hitler? Nooo, Hermione wouldn't relate to her at** _ **all**_ **.**

 **Four, I just want to say I'm overwhelmed by how many of you are following this story, and I've gotten some really fantastic reviews. The support and feedback means a lot towards my drive and inspiration for this story, and I'm glad so many of you like it. Thank you!**

 **Until next time…**


	4. Chapter 4

_"In the night, when the wind dies and silence rules the place of glittering stone, I remember. And they all live again." - Glen Cook, Soldiers Live_

* * *

The hotel door had a catch-and-release mechanism which kept it from slamming shut as Reid rather violently tried to yank it closed faster. Slamming doors has never solved problems before and it never will, but there is something immensely satisfying about slamming a door shut, the shocking volume of the sound drowning out the click of the lock and then the subsequent rattle of the walls around the frame. Spencer Reid was not a violent man, but he saw the most depraved and brutal consequences of violence nearly every day, and in the middle of a case such as this one where they were stuck in a discouraging hamster wheel of no progress despite the tireless investigation of the local cops and the BAU, slamming a door or two was a small simple way to relieve a bit of stress… something that was being denied to him by this _damn_ door in this _stupid_ hotel in this _god-forsaken_ city.

Reid stripped off his bag and coat and paced restlessly around the room, trying to calm down after a frustrating, unproductive day after a string of increasingly frustrating, unproductive days. Usually Reid handled the emotions that came with this job with a slightly detached academic professionalism or a resigned weariness, but some days were just too much. Like today.

A part of him knew that Hotch had made the right call; sending the stressed-out team back to the hotel after three days of grueling, nonstop work. But the biggest part of him that was still flipping through files and studying crime scene photos was screaming for him to be back at the local police station working to find this unsub.

That smaller part of him observed that Hotch had also made the right call by not allowing the team to take home the case files to distract them from resting. _Not that it matters when you have an eidetic memory,_ Reid thought cynically.

Reid accidentally kicked over his bag, and it unceremoniously flopped over and spilled its contents. He swore, glaring at the bag which really had done nothing wrong, and used his foot to aggressively kick the mess out of the way. But he missed a small card, that stayed flat against the hotel room carpet, and he froze when he realized what it was.

He slowly withdrew his phone from his pocket.

Then immediately shoved it back in, disgusted with himself. _You're on a case, you need to focus, and she probably wouldn't pick up anyway._

He sat down on the bed and busied himself with taking off his shoes, vest, tie, and belt, trying to ignore the card still on the floor. Left in his jeans and shirt, he turned off the bedside lamp and flopped back onto the bed, on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling.

His eyes began to adjust to the oppressive blackness of the room but as everything began to be shaded in colorless dark hues and separate back into real objects and not just shadows, he found that to be worse than being unable to see. At least when it was completely dark, he could maybe pretend that he was back home and that this horrible case was over, or better, that it had never happened.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried all the mental tricks and rituals that had helped him fall asleep before but all he could see were photographs. Crime scene photographs, autopsy photographs, and worse, photographs of the victims before they died. There was something truly disturbing about seeing a smiling picture of a murder victim, like going back in time for one second and meeting a normal person but knowing something horrific would happen to them someday and not being able to do anything to stop it.

Reid swore again and angrily turned on the light - well, as angrily as someone can flip a switch, it was like that stupid door that wouldn't let him slam it. He surged upward and sat on the end of the bed, pressing his hands hard against his eyes like he could force them to stay closed.

Finally the angry tension left his body and he slumped, defeated, and gazed tiredly around him at the utterly uninteresting room. He hated hotel rooms. At least in the police station, even when the team was stuck, they were surrounded by bulletin boards and dry erase boards and files and it felt like they were _doing_ something. And as much as he may hate seeing graphic crime scene photos, there was something infinitely worse about being in such a picture-perfect hotel room that seemed so untouched by the savagery humanity was capable of. It was just unfair.

His eyes cast about the room, looking for a diversion, but he was too agitated to read a book or watch TV and he was too tired to go somewhere else.

Reid began feeling claustrophobic. There was nowhere to go, not even to sleep.

His gaze landed on the card, the blue inked words on it staring innocently back at him.

In a surge of desperate impulsiveness, he snatched the card and punched the numbers on his cell phone keypad, pressing call before he could second guess himself and holding it to his ear.

As the dull electronic sound of ringing went on for what felt like hours, Reid felt his rash courage draining out of him and he began to regret his decision. But it felt like his phone was glued to his ear; he couldn't bring himself to hang up.

Just as the endless ringing was bordering on unbearable, there was a muffled click.

"This is Hermione Granger, how may I help you?" She sounded professional albeit curious, and extremely alert for two in the morning. The very sound of her voice calmed him so that he forgot to identify himself immediately and just sat there, overwhelmed by the feeling that he wasn't completely alone anymore.

"Hello?" Her voice split the air again, this time tinged with wariness.

His face heated at his lapse in greeting. He was briefly glad she couldn't see it (although he would have gladly exposed his embarrassment to see her in person right then). "Oh, sorry. Um, it's me - I mean, this is Spencer Reid?"

"Spencer!" She sounded surprised, but happily so. "How are you?" She said warmly.

His eyes betrayed themselves by glancing at the open file on the small hotel room desk. He flipped it closed. "...I'm fine."

For a second the other side of the line was quiet. When she spoke again, her voice was soft but stern. "Don't you lie to me, Spencer Reid."

"I -" he started to apologize but she cut him off.

"And don't you say sorry either. I know you're on a case and you said you didn't like being distracted. Something must be wrong for you to be calling me out of the blue like this." It sounded like she was going to continue but she took and audible breath then abruptly stopped, waiting for him to respond.

"What if I just wanted to say hi to a friend?" He deflected.

"If that were true you wouldn't have phrased it as a question." She retorted. "And I highly doubt your one-track mind would have allowed yourself to be distracted while you're on a case without a sufficient reason."

A short laugh escaped him, turning into a sigh of relieved tension, like air escaping a popped balloon. "I have been called many things in my life, but I have never been accused of having a one-track mind."

He could hear the bemused smirk in her voice. "It's not always a negative thing. In our - in _your_ line of work," she rushed to correct herself, "Your mind needs to be on one track to get the job done."

"That's true." Reid admitted. "It's not often I meet civilians that can understand that..." He trailed off pointedly, hoping she would answer his unspoken question.

She hesitated only briefly, but long enough for him to notice. "Some of my closest friends back in the UK work in governmental law enforcement." She hesitated again, longer this time, before finally admitting in a very serious voice, "I actually worked for the government as well… for awhile."

"Really?" Reid said, instinctively surprised, but upon immediate further processing, not very shocked at all. _Private boarding school with a specific educational focus…_ "You went to a military academy." He realized.

"Not exactly." She said sounding amused again, as if by some private joke. "Our government did select a lot of their candidates from my school, yes. But there were many other career opportunities I could have pursued."

"Why didn't you mention this before?" Reid said, trying to ignore the tiny flickering of suspicion he had as a profiler.

"I don't how it is here in America, doctor," She responded playfully. "But we English can be somewhat reserved. We don't tell all the sordid details of our past on a first date."

At the word _date,_ Reid stopped breathing for about half a second while a thousand thoughts roared through his mind. Then he heard the voice of his best friend: _be cool, man, just be cool._ "Was, uh," he cleared his throat, trying to recover. "Was your work in government sordid?" He asked, hoping his voice conveyed teasing skepticism and not the very uncool nervous wreck his mind was in.

"Isn't it always?" She murmured, the gentle sadness in her voice just shy of bitter.

Her tone of voice inspired him to toss the idea of being 'cool' - after all, he hadn't been cool for almost thirty years, why start now? He asked tentatively, hopefully, "So… we were on a date?"

She laughed, loud and bright, banishing all the creeping darkness in his lonely hotel room. "Perhaps not, if only one of us thought so!"

He smirked; she was clearly teasing him so he would return the favor. "My friend Emily always told me that it doesn't count as a date unless the actual word is used before the event itself." Actually, she usually used that argument on Morgan, who was of the opinion that spending any one on one time with a woman he was interested in counted as a date. It was a recurring and brutal debate between the colleagues.

"I like the way your friend thinks." Hermione mused approvingly. "And if you share her opinion, you can always remedy our current predicament by asking me out on an official date."

Reid grinned at her cheekiness. "Why Miss Granger, how presumptuous of you." He said, adopting a purposefully terrible British accent as a tease.

She snorted. "Ten points to the FBI for your truly horrifying impressionist skills." He quirked an eyebrow at her odd turn of phrase but chalked it up to some sort of British academic rewards system from her schooling days. "And I prefer the term _optimistic_." She rejoined, her tone outrageously flirtatious even to his oblivious ears.

"Presumptuous _and_ forward. A lethal combination." He laughed.

She hummed, abruptly serious. "Spencer… I once waited nearly seven years to tell someone my true feelings for them, only revealing them during a practically life or death situation." She paused and his whole world seemed to pause with her. "You know better than anyone how short and terrible life can be. I won't wait seven more years for another chance at happiness." She said determinedly, and Spencer felt something fragile and warm flicker to life in his heart. "I don't know you very well, but I rather like what I know so far and I'm not going to play any games like when I was a silly teenager."

Some part of his mind that was still capable of normal thought processes reflected that 'silly' was probably a word that never applied to Hermione Granger, even in adolescence.

"I, um, I like you too." He managed to say in the only-slightly awkward silence after she finished speaking. He heard a soft intake of breath over the phone.

"Good." She said softly, a smile in her voice.

"But," He continued with a grin, "I'm not going to ask you out over the phone. My mother and all of my female friends would never let me hear the end of it." She laughed lightly, like bubbles rising in water. It made his grin widen. "So you'll just have to wait until I return."

"The suspense is unbearable." She said dryly. "How ever will I go on."

Her sarcasm made him roll his eyes fondly. "I guess you'll just have to keep being optimistic." He teased.

"I plan on it." She said warmly.

That warmth filled the ensuing comfortable silence between them only interrupted by the soft sound of their breathing, and in that quiet, knowing she was with him in spirit if not in person, Spencer was able to face the ugly shadows lurking in his mind without fear.

He closed his eyes and let the sound of her breathing give life to the ghosts that haunted his memory, and he was able to remember them as he never knew them, with smiles and laughter and breath and heartbeats.

"It's children." The words escaped Spencer before he could stop them.

"I'm sorry?"

He closed his eyes and gripped the phone tighter. "The case I'm working right now. The unsub is killing children."

"Oh, Spencer…" Hermione's voice was soft and heavy, and instead of feeling better like he had hoped, he regretted burdening her with this part of his life. But before he could apologize, she said in the same quiet voice, "A long time ago, when I was… working for the government… many people I knew and loved died. Teachers and friends and schoolmates. Children." She paused. "There is nothing that can make that better, not beautiful memorials or posthumous medals they never received or moving speeches about love and sacrifice and bravery they never heard. It doesn't matter what kind of pretty plaques and statues you decorate it with, a grave is still a grave."

Spencer thought of all the families he had seen cry, the parents unable to accept that the body lying in front of them was their child, and of all the reassuring words he tried to comfort them with that he himself could not believe but hoped they would.

"There's nothing that can make it better." Hermione repeated with a sigh.

"What happened to your optimism?" Spencer managed to tease gently, without any real humor to his words.

"Optimism doesn't come naturally to me, after the past few years of my life." She said reflectively. "I'm not optimistic in _spite_ of tragedy, I think I'm optimistic _because_ of it." She laughed slightly. "I know that sounds a bit silly, but I always think about something one of my old professors said: 'happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.' Such a simple and age old concept, light versus dark, but I think people often try to battle against darkness without light, and it will always be futile. So in my everyday life I try to strengthen the light in my life, like my friends and my knowledge of truth or even just enjoying a good cup of tea…" Her voice turned a little shy here, "Or maybe enjoying the company of a certain FBI agent that I rather like," Spencer grinned, "because that gives me strength to battle my darkness, which comes mostly in memories."

Spencer was quiet for a long moment, absorbing what she said, and Hermione misread his silence and laughed again in a self-conscious way. "I know it sounds unbearably cliche, but my professor was the sort of person that could read a cheesy holiday card and have it make the same impact as the theory of evolution." Her voice turned nostalgic. "He was a man that deserved to be remembered with the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela and Gandhi, but he didn't want such things and so most of world doesn't remember him…" She sighed again.

"He sounds like a remarkable person." Spencer offered, then added with a surge of courage and honesty, "But not, I think, more remarkable than you, Hermione Granger."

"Oh! Well, I… um…" Hermione huffed. "Now you've gone and flustered me, Dr. Reid. And here I thought I was doing a rather decent job at being eloquent."

He laughed. "You were." He reassured her. "Seriously, Hermione, that was exactly what I needed to hear."

"Then I'm glad you broke your 'no personal calls on a case' rule and called me." She said warmly. "Although you might not want to make a habit of it, I wouldn't want to be the reason you get distracted." She joked.

Spencer smiled. "I think I made the right call, pun intended."

"Oh, very clever." Hermione snorted.

They chatted about nothing in particular for a few minutes, and Spencer found himself finally relaxing in what now felt like the most comfortable hotel room he had ever inhabited, until his eyelids began to become burdened by exhaustion and yawns interrupted his speech.

"It must be ridiculously late over there." Hermione finally remarked. "You really should go to sleep so you can be at your best tomorrow."

Spencer sighed, knowing she was right. "I know, it's just…" He hesitated. "Well, talking to you has been the best part of my day." He finally admitted. "And I'm… well, I'm afraid of where my mind will go if I hang up and try to sleep in a dark room."

Hermione didn't mock him, not that he had expected her to. She was thoughtfully quiet as she processed this, before saying, "I have an idea, but it might seem a bit strange."

Spencer waited for her to explain, curious.

"During a tough time in our lives, my two dearest friends had a lot of trouble sleeping. We all did, really. I would read to myself in bed and one of my friends, Ron, listened to the radio to help him fall asleep, but it began to drive our other friend, Harry, absolutely mad. One day the radio broke, and Ron thought Harry had done it. He hadn't, it was just an old radio. I was afraid they would fight and was desperate to stop it, so I offered to read to them out loud, claiming it was information they needed to hear. Actually, it was just a story from an old book of fairytales, and when I was done I looked up and they were both sound asleep. Most nights after that, Ron would turn off the radio without being and they would let me read them to sleep."

Spencer wanted to hear more about her friends, but he caught on to her idea. "You want to read to me?"

"If you'd like me to." She said, sounding a little embarrassed.

Spencer remembered how his mother used to read to him, and felt that warm and fragile thing burn a little brighter. "That sounds nice." He managed.

"Okay, hold on a minute." There were some muffled sounds as Hermione presumably retrieved a book and sat down. "Spencer?"

"I'm here." He said with another yawn.

"You mentioned a book you favored during our conversation over tea, and I do work at a library, so…"

Spencer was immediately more awake. "You have _In Search of Lost Time_ by Marcel Proust?"

"Well, I have the first volume, _Swann's Way._ "

"That's… that's my favorite book."

"I know." Hermione said, sounding pleased. "You told me."

"No, I mean, that's my favorite book because it was my mom's favorite book to read to me when I was a kid." Spencer said, trying not to convey how much this meant to him, yet at the same time, trying to do just that.

"Really?" Hermione said, surprised but not deterred. "Well we can't go wrong with that, although I know I can't hope to live up to a mother's bedtime reading. Anyway, I'm already on volume four but I think for this we'll start from volume one, chapter one." She paused, then said a little awkwardly, "Are you ready?"

Spencer smiled, leaning back and closing his eyes. "Yes."

"Alright, then." She cleared her throat. " 'My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted for so short a time, she went down again so soon, that the moment in which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the utmost pain; for it heralded the moment which was to follow it, when she would have left me and gone downstairs again…'"

Spencer knew the words of the text before she spoke them, and so allowed the story to weave itself in the background of his mind like a sound machine and instead let himself focus on the expressive rise-and-fall rhythm of Hermione's voice that seemed to reach right into his chest to that bright and fragile thing inside of him, strengthening the light.

* * *

 _"I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine." - Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong_

* * *

 **Author's Note: I have absolutely no excuse for how long it has been since I last updated this story, but I have not abandoned it and the truly amazing number of people that have been favoriting and following and reviewing my story has been insanely inspiring and has kept me going during those last few months when I have never lacked inspiration more. Ugh, writing this has been like pulling teeth but I am finally happy with it and I think I can start on a more regular updating schedule now.**

 **Also, the votes are in, and magic will officially be canon for Eunoia, so we'll see how I incorporate that in. I have a few ideas but of course, I appreciate feedback.**

 **One last thing, I have another Harry Potter story I'm working on simultaneously to Eunoia, so stay tuned for that.**

 **Again, you guys are phenomenal! Thank you so much for all your reviews and support!**

 **P.S. My best friend always teases me about how I can't seem to end a chapter without some dramatic, metaphorical line, so I did it on purpose this time. It's just so fun!**


	5. Chapter 5

_"If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever." -Alfred Tennyson_

* * *

It was six am, and the building was mostly silent and still, the fluorescent lighting casting the industrious neutral color palette of the building in cool light. There was only a few people roaming the halls besides the security guards making the morning rounds.

One guard paused as he passed the doors to the designated bullpen for the Behavioral Analysis Unit, glancing with mild interest at the elevator that had just dinged. The doors slid open smoothly and out shuffled six weary individuals, led by a tall middle aged man in a suit.

"Good morning, William." The tall man greeted the security guard in a deep, quiet voice. William nodded in acknowledgment before going about his routine.

"You know, I don't think I've ever heard William talk." An older man joined the first, salt-and-pepper eyebrows arching in curiosity.

The tall man didn't shrug but the severe lines in his face softened as he smirked slightly. "Neither have I."

They walked towards the doors of the bullpen, followed by a well-muscled black man wearing a t-shirt instead of a suit. "The brother has talked to me before."

The woman walking next to him, with raven hair and striking features, rolled her eyes teasingly. "'The brother'? Oh please, you probably just forgot his name."

"You just don't understand, princess. It's a black thing."

"You said that three times on the plane." She scoffed. "You've used up your quota for the day."

"I've got a quota for being black?"

The brunette gave her companion a dry look. "I meant how many times you've called me 'princess', but if you wanna go there…"

A pretty but disheveled blonde woman groaned from behind them as she rubbed her face. "It's too early for you two to be arguing already."

"Uh-oh, JJ hasn't had her coffee yet. Somebody alert the White House about a possible terror threat." The black man joked. The brunette laughed quietly as the blonde glared at them half-heartedly.

"I don't need coffee, I _need_ to go home, take a hot shower, and sleep in my own _bed_." She paused to think. " _Then_ I will need about a gallon of coffee."

The dark-haired woman ignored her shorter friend's grumpy tone as she glanced back at the final member of their procession; a tall, lean young man sporting old, fraying Converse high-tops and some truly alarming bedhead. "I think Reid needs sleep even more than JJ. He looks like an advertisement for that new indie zombie flick."

Reid was ambling along at an excruciating pace, staring blankly at the screen of his cell phone with a slight smile on his face.

The black man's eyes gleamed with mischief and he started towards Reid, but his female companions grabbed his arms in one swift, obviously practiced maneuver. "Leave him alone," JJ scolded. "He took this case harder than almost all of us, and he was up practically two days straight figuring out where the unsub was hiding." Her voice gentled. "Just let him be…"

The brunette's tone was much more amused. "Reid sure doesn't need Derek messing with him right now, but I don't think we should just leave him alone." She nodded to where the young man was about to very slowly walk himself into a wall.

Derek sprang to his friend's side and slung an arm around his shoulders, tactfully steering him through the sliding doors instead of the wall. "Hey kid, you sure you okay to drive home?"

Reid looked up and blinked. "Oh, yeah, sorry. Um… what was the question?"

Derek laughed and shook his head. "Just try not to die by driving below the speed limit into a telephone pole before our next case, alright Reid?" He ruffled his friend's hair before sauntering away with their brunette friend, already teasing her about something.

JJ however, stayed and watched in concerned bemusement as Reid came to almost a complete standstill just over the threshold, back to staring at his phone. "Did someone hypnotize you over text?"

His head jerked up. "What?" Then, to her confusion, his face flushed slightly. "Oh, um, no. It's just… a math problem…" He cleared his throat, "Also, it's highly unlikely that someone could be hypnotized with the use of text because of all the factors that -"

JJ laughed and held up her hand. "Sorry, Spence, but it's also too early for facts." He smiled in apology. She sighed. "I have to go to my office, then I'm getting the hell out of here before we get another case. I'll see you later."

He nodded absently, already looking at his phone again.

JJ walked away, shaking her head fondly at their sometimes scatter-brained genius, but as she glanced back to suddenly see him stride purposefully to his desk and rifle vigorously through his mail.

JJ frowned slightly. There was something odd about her friend, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it…

Her phone suddenly buzzed and she swore viciously before seeing that it was just her husband, saying he was on his way to pick her up, armed with her favorite donuts and some coffee. She beamed, completely forgetting about Spence in favor of her husband who was going to get _so_ lucky later…

...as soon as she had gotten some sleep.

* * *

Spencer was usually a very observant man, given that his profession relied on piecing together virtually undetectable psychological clues to create a specific and accurate profile on any particular person, but that morning he was utterly oblivious to any of his teammate's however brief scrutiny because he was completely focused on the succinct and somewhat cryptic text from one rather lovely librarian:

 _Welcome home, doctor. Check your mailbox._

He hadn't talked to her for two days (actually 53 hours, 32 minutes, and 5 seconds), since that late night phone call, except for one brief text to say they were flying back, to which he had received this response upon exiting the plane.

He was confused and a little perturbed about the second half of the text. She didn't have his home address and he wasn't in any phone book or easily accessible database, and she didn't seem like the type to hack into the FBI's personnel files or do anything else so stalkerish… at least he hoped. He really liked this girl so far, and it would be a huge bummer to find out she was a lunatic.

Then he realized.

He sprang into action, practically running to his desk and grabbing the modest stack of mail that had amassed since they left on the case. It was mostly memos and some minor paperwork, but there was one slightly thick white envelope addressed to him in familiar penmanship, practical and precise but graceful.

His finger slid under the seal to rip it open before an abrupt awareness of his surroundings gave him pause. He glanced around to ensure that his colleagues weren't paying attention to him before casually breaking the seal, keeping his face blank as if this were any other piece of work-related mail.

His brow furrowed in confusion as he pulled out an odd assortment of paper; a sheet of notebook paper, a piece of torn purple construction paper, some delicate and flowery stationary, a receipt or two, a _napkin,_ and a few post-it-notes.

One plain sheet of printer paper stood out, neatly folded.

 _Spencer,_

 _Even though you broke your own cellular isolation rule while on a case with that very lovely phone call, I decided to be a good civilian and abide by a government agent's decision and not initiate contact via text or whatnot._

He smiled at her brisk and businesslike prose that was very proper but had an obvious warmth and levity to it. The next paragraph improved in that area even more so:

 _However, I have grown rather attached to you rather quickly, and I find I enjoy talking to you so much that I have begun to mentally inform you of my opinions of everything in my mundane everyday life. Since you were regrettably not there in person and I could not text you, I fell into the odd habit of simply writing down whatever I wanted to say to you at any given moment on whatever bit of parchment was readily available (I actually started this practice by writing on a napkin at a cafe, can you imagine!). This would have been much simpler, albeit probably very annoying, if I could have just texted you... but they say absence makes the heart grow fonder and I am inclined to agree with whoever "they" are… also, this was much more fun ;)_

 _So here you have all my increasingly random and pointless collection of thoughts I wanted to share with you while you were away. And provided such an intimate glance into my psyche does not frighten you away irreparably, I do hope you text me when you return because I am quite looking forward to that first date :)_

 _Yours,_

 _Hermione_

Spencer knew he was probably grinning like an idiot but he totally didn't care as he carefully put down the letter and picked up the napkin, upon which the slightly-bleeding blue scribbles (blue seemed to be her color of choice) compared whatever cafe she had been at to Miss Muffin's Teapot and finding it lacking, apparently. He laughed quietly at her frustration with the, quote, 'unoriginal and profoundly lacking in taste' decor and her humorous transcription of the conversation two teenage girls were having about a boy, complete with doodles that made up for what they lacked in skill with creativity and some helpful captions.

Spencer found himself sitting in his not-entirely-comfortable desk chair, sorting through Hermione's notes, the random mathematical equations and quotes from literature and the odd knock knock joke, piecing together her life while he had been gone... and the warm and bright feeling inside him was like reading a really good story that stays with you long after you finish reading. It was like when he was a kid, going on epic adventures in his own backyard that didn't end even when he was called back inside for dinner. It was like coming home.

Then he heard Emily laugh at something Morgan said, and it brought to his mind another laugh, and he realized all he had to do to hear it in person was get in his car and drive.

Spencer jumped to his feet, quickly but carefully gathering up Hermione's wonderful, beautiful, simple gift back into the envelope and it felt like he had caught a firefly in a jar. He rushed out of the bullpen, barely remembering to say goodbye to the remaining members of the team.

Hermione was waiting for him, and he was going to ask her out on a date.

* * *

Emily and Morgan watched Reid run out of the bullpen like he was on fire, faces a matched set of bafflement.

"Okay, we're all profilers, so I can't be the only one that sees it, right?" Morgan exclaimed. "Reid is being _weird_."

"Reid is being weird? Alert the media." Rossi deadpanned as he strolled from Hotch's office into his own.

"Oh no, I don't care what the media needs to know, I'm off duty!" JJ declared as she walked up to her teammates, jacket and purse in hand.

Morgan shook his head. "The media doesn't need to know anything. I'm just said Reid is being weird." He explained.

"Oh." JJ frowned. "What does the media have to do with that?"

Morgan sighed. Something that could have been a chuckle came from the direction of Rossi's doorway.

Emily's contemplative gaze had stayed where their friend had disappeared. "I think Derek may be onto something, actually." She said thoughtfully. "Reid has been off this entire case."

"I already said he had a harder time with this one." JJ said. "We all saw that."

"No, this is different." Emily insisted. "The first few days, Reid kept getting more and more frustrated. We all were, but he was really taking it personally. That day Hotch made us go home, I was almost afraid to leave him alone."

Morgan nodded, his expression concerned.

" _But_ ," Emily continued, warming to her topic, "The next morning, he was like an entirely different person. Alert, focused, professional, and almost _happy._ Not that, exactly, but it was definitely something closer to that than the desperation we saw the night before."

"Yeah," Morgan agreed. "He was calm, and… confident?"

"I think the word you're looking for is _positive_." A new voice joined them. The three looked up to see their team leader closing his office door behind him. Hotch started to walk over to them as he spoke. "Reid was being positive."

Emily nodded, pointing at Hotch in excited agreement. "Yes, exactly. But the question is, what brought this change on?"

They fell into brief contemplation. Then Morgan shrugged and said, "Maybe he just got a good night's rest. Or had an epiphany. Or finished another doctoral degree. Who knows what goes on in that boy's head?"

Emily laughed. "Yeah, it could be something small. Whatever it was, I'm glad it happened. Reid really came through on this case."

"He always does." Hotch said, then on that note he nodded at them in farewell and calmly strode from the room.

Morgan and Emily took that as an end to the conversation and began to gather their things. But JJ said, "I think it has something to do with what he was looking at on his phone, or at least it's connected."

Morgan and Emily looked at each other in mild surprise. "I hadn't thought of that." Emily admitted.

Morgan pulled on his leather jacket. "Well, ladies, then the solution is simple."

They looked at him, dubious.

He smirked. "If it has to do with technology…" Their faces lit up with realization. "...Then there's only one person for the job."

They grinned at each other. "Garcia."

Leaning against his office door frame, Rossi watched his younger teammates begin to conspire and scheme amongst themselves and shook his head. "At the very least, this will be interesting." Then he sighed.

"I need a drink."

* * *

" _Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back." -Plato_

* * *

 **Author's Note: I could not come up with a single word for this chapter for weeks, then finally I just sat down and wrote it all in one sitting. I'm beginning to see a pattern in my writing process… joy. But I'm quite pleased with how this turned out, so I won't complain too much.**

 **Anyway, I'm so excited I got to introduce the team in this chapter! Our story's about to get a lot more fun. To answer some review questions...**

 **I haven't set up a concrete timeline for either the Harry Potter or Criminal Minds elements of this story, and probably won't. But I definitely fudged some math to make my dream story work. I don't know how long it's been since the final HP book, or what specific season it is on CM, but for some basic context: Hermione and Reid are in their late twenties, she's probably 27 or 28 and he's probably 29. And the BAU lineup (if you haven't guessed) is Hotch, Rossi, Morgan, Prentiss, JJ, Garcia, and of course Reid. That's my favorite group so that's what it will be.**

 **Yes, Reid and (maybe? probably?) the team will find out about Hermione's magic. I just haven't decided how yet.**

 **No, Hermione is not JUST a librarian. *wink***

 **On that note, to all of you that reviewed, THANK YOU. I got some of the most touching, fantastic, helpful feedback. It is truly an amazing thing to know that so many people like my story. I treasure each review, and will try to reply to each one personally from now on because you guys deserve it.**

 **As always, thanks for reading, I hope you liked it, and please share your thoughts!**


	6. Chapter 6

"' _But I like you.' He cleared his throat. 'I like you first and second and third.'" -F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise_

* * *

When he heard the click that signalled his call had been picked up, Spencer Reid sighed heavily. "I have bad news."

"Hello to you too, doctor." Hermione greeted him, sounding bemused. He smiled, even as he did so marvelling at the fact that just the sound of her voice could cause such a reaction. She continued, sounding very understanding. "You're leaving for a case, then?"

"Surprisingly, no." Spencer admitted. "It's just that I had our, um, our date," He tried to fight the heat of nervousness and anticipation in his face even though he knew she couldn't see it, "Um, I had our date all planned out and now the entire universe seems to be conspiring against us making those plans a reality."

"You're being awfully melodramatic for a man of science and logic, Spencer." She chuckled. "Now, what has the entire universe allegedly done to ruin our date?"

He scowled in the direction of his apartment window. "It's _raining_."

She snorted in laughter. "Were we going sunbathing?" She teased. "Or comparing the accuracy of various sundials?"

He laughed a little, despite his frustration with the current precipitation. "No. But sunlight, or at least the absence of rain, was kind of an unspoken requirement for our activities today."

"At least now I know for sure you're not a vampire." Hermione said blithely. "Given your desire for sunlight."

"Well, there wasn't much of a chance of that anyway."

"Statistically speaking, you're probably right." She agreed with a cryptic note of humor in her voice. "Since the entire universe has foiled your plans, I'd like to know what our sunlight-requiring activities were going to be."

He hesitated, glancing out the window in with one last glance, futilely hoping the weather had changed in the last few seconds. "...I _guess_ I can tell you." He sighed. "I was gonna take you dancing."

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

He rushed to fill the silence. "I know it's kind of goofy and cliche, but I remember you told me that time we had tea that your school only had one formal dance and it that was ruined because you had an argument with your friend and you'd always wanted to go dancing again but life got so busy over the next few years you never got the chance, um, so... I wanted to... give you that chance… I guess." He lamely finished his rambling and cringed, waiting for her reaction.

"...Spencer Reid, that is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever done for me." There was a giddy, almost breathless tone to her normally calm and thoughtful voice that made the nervous knot that had formed in his stomach to relax. Then she giggled a little. "Well, attempted to do for me." He glared at the rain-darkened window again.

"Oh, well." She sighed wistfully. "I suppose we should reschedule, then. That's really too bad, though, it would have been just lovely…" Her voice abruptly changed from disappointed to matter-of-fact. "Well, that's fine! It's good, actually, because I've got some filing to catch up on here at the library after I close up. I'll talk to you later, Spencer, alright?"

"Um… okay…" He stumbled over a goodbye and hung up the phone, then stared blankly at it as unhappiness and awed disbelief welled up in him. He was unhappy because she was unhappy, and taken aback by the realization that Hermione Granger, the woman of his dreams that impossibly existed in reality and was _so_ out of his league, was actually _disappointed_ that she couldn't spend time with _him!_

It was so abruptly bizarre that he almost laughed out loud.

The unhappiness still lurked in him through his amazement, and Spencer examined it, and that unhappiness turned into the intense, visceral hatred of Hermione Granger's unhappiness. She should _never_ be disappointed or unhappy, especially when he could do something about it.

His eyes fell on one of his many bookcases where a neglected phone book was shelved. And he got an idea.

* * *

"Remind me again why this was such a great idea?"

Derek Morgan glanced at his companion, an increasingly disgruntled Emily Prentiss, and gave her his most persuasive smile. "Because we want to know what's going on with our friend Reid, because we care about him, remember?"

"I care a lot less on our day off." Emily muttered. "Speaking of, why did we have to do this on our day off? And did I mention that it is _our day off_?"

"Ooh, looks like our princess slept on a pea last night." Penelope Garcia chimed in, grinning over her shoulder at her grumpy friend, her hazel eyes twinkling from behind tangerine orange glasses frames.

Emily rolled her eyes. "I'm just _saying_ -"

"Okey-dokey!" Garcia cut her off cheerfully. "Let's illegally hack into a fellow government agent's cell phone, which I have absolutely no moral or ethical objections to whatsoever because apparently the definition of 'friendship' got changed without my knowledge!"

Morgan laughed at her sarcasm. "Try not to be so supportive, baby girl." He teased without an ounce of remorse.

She tossed him a saucy wink. "You know I'll do anything for you, sugar, but if you ask for help from the Goddess of Technology, Wisdom, and small furry animals, then you're gonna get some wisdom in return."

"Can I exchange the wisdom for some small furry animals?" Morgan muttered.

"Sorry Charlie, the small furry animals only go to the good little FBI agents who don't spy on their friends!" Garcia chirped.

"Then can we exchange it for some technology, since that's what we're here for?" Emily pointed out. "And may I remind you that you _agreed_ to do this, Garcia, because your horse is looking a little high right about now."

"...Touche." Garcia conceded. "But let the record reflect that I have misgivings! Misgivings, I say!"

"Duly noted." Morgan vowed.

"Gracias." The technical analyst beamed, then said absently, "You know, 'gracias' is an anagram for 'Garcia', if you put the R in front of the A and add an S to the end. Which really isn't an anagram at all, but whatever. Hey, do you think they knew that when they were creating the Spanish language, and maybe someone named Garcia got a little cocky and decided the word for thanks should sound like their name because they were generous enough to create the word?"

She glanced back expectantly at her baffled colleagues. "Well do you?"

"...I have never thought anything less." Morgan finally responded.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Spoilsport." Morgan only shook his head.

Garcia turned back to her computer screen. "Alrighty then, let's get this shady show on the road!" She flipped her bright blonde curls and flexed her bejeweled, polka-dot-polished fingers, then let them fly at an impossible speed over her multicolored keyboard, chatting all the while. "It's a good thing I have virtually all of Reid's personal information, because now this will be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy! Well, easier-peasier than it would be otherwise, which is still pretty darn easy-peasy! Hey, that's the fourth time I've said 'pea' in like, two minutes, which is funny 'cause I don't even like peas! Ha! But it is a fun word to say..."

"I thought you switched her espresso coffee beans in the breakroom with decaf." Emily whispered to Morgan as she regarded their chatterbox friend with wide, wary eyes.

"I did." He murmured vehemently. "Weeks ago."

"Like you guys were ever going to pull a coffee bait-and-switch on me." Garcia interrupted loudly. "I've been using the exact same imported artisan coffee beans for like, five years straight. I know its taste better than I know Derek's workout routine." Emily looked disturbed, Morgan only smirked. "Also, aren't you dudes like, trained in stealth at the academy? What's up with the whispering? If you can call it whispering, because that was seriously loud. Did you both cut class that day or something?"

Morgan and Emily only stared at each other helplessly, almost afraid to interrupt the blonde.

"Ah, here we go!" Garcia exclaimed cheerfully. "Our dear adorkable doctor's cellular history." Morgan and Emily leaned forward to scrutinize the screen with Garcia. "Wow, he has like, ten saved contacts." Garcia said, wrinkling her nose. "That's pretty sad."

"This is Reid we're talking about." Morgan said, not unkindly. "You know he has every phone number he needs memorized. Those ten are on speed dial for convenience, most likely."

"Nice profiling, my sexy and muscular chocolate-dipped Sherlock Holmes." Garcia said approvingly.

Emily made a face. "Ew."

"All his cell phone activity seems pretty standard for Reid." Garcia said, ignoring Emily. "And _don't_ ask me how I know what his standard activity is." She said, pointing a finger imperiously into the air. Derek slowly closed his mouth.

"Hmm." Garcia frowned after a moment.

"What?" Emily said, sounded only slightly intrigued.

"It's probably nothing, but there is one abnormality." Garcia moved the cursor to highlight an area of the screen. "It looks like he had one _very_ long phone call with an unknown number… gee willikers, three whole hours? Either Reid is very unpracticed at ordering pizza, or he was talking to a friend none of us knew he had." She mused.

"That _is_ a little weird." Emily admitted.

"Looks like he also received a text from that same number a few days later." Garcia said, moving her mouse and clicking.

" 'Welcome home, doctor. Check your mailbox.'" Morgan read out loud. "...oh-kay."

"Well that means nothing to me." Garcia shrugged. "Okay, profilers, I choose you! Aaaand… Profile!"  
Emily looked distinctly unimpressed. "Day off." She said shortly.

Unperturbed, Garcia spun her chair in Morgan's direction. She waved her hand at his face. "Aaaand… Profile!"

Morgan thought hard for a moment. "I think I remember him mentioning scoping out a new library recently and that he was on a waiting list for some books."

"Oh, yeah." Emily nodded, apparently forgetting her 'day off' convictions. "He's always complaining about libraries and bookstores taking forever to get in new books because it takes him like, less than a week to get through their stocks."

Morgan laughed. "Yeah, I remember him being on hold with one store for thirty whole minutes because they were avoiding his calls about new books."

Emily snickered too. "That's probably it."

Garcia clapped her hands together. "What a joy to watch such brilliant minds at work. What a joy indeed. Simply jubilance. Anyway, that should be easy-peasy-" Emily and Morgan groaned. "I _mean_ , that should be easy to check. Just easy. No peasy. Because peas are gross."

"Garcia…" Morgan said warningly.

"Okay, you bossy albatross-y, don't get your cute little panties in a twist." She retorted, already typing away at her keyboard.

" _Panties_?" He scoffed.

"Nope! Stop _right_ there!" Emily yelped. "No. More. Words."

After a few seconds, he couldn't resist. "Baby girl, you _know_ I wear -"

Emily promptly kicked his chair out from under him and sent him sprawling onto the floor.

"Remember boys and girls, nice birds use their words, but bad birds are worms!" Garcia recited without even sparing them a glance.

"That makes no sense." Morgan groaned as he picked himself up off the ground and sat back in his chair, a safe distance from Emily's lightning-fast reflexes.

"Okay Ray Ray, we'll just trace the unknown number and… presto pesto!" Garcia declared with a dramatic push of a button.

There was a pause as the page loaded, then a weird fizzling sound, and all of the computer displays flickered, flashing through every color of the rainbow before abruptly turning off.

The three occupants of the small room blinked in the suddenly very dark room.

"...is that supposed to happen?" Morgan asked tentatively.

"Is that _smoke?"_ Emily said incredulously, pointing to a modem that did indeed seem to be in need of a nicotine patch or two.

Garcia let out a strangled squeak.

* * *

This time, as Reid waited for the person on the other end of the line to pick up, he was full of excited impatience. The ringing stopped and there was a faint click, then a somewhat unfamiliar feminine voice answered. "Hello?"

"Hi, Cassandra? This is Spencer Reid." He said in a businesslike voice, shutting his car door and awkwardly opening his umbrella one-handed as he walked quickly toward the building.

The voice changed to eager and cheerful. "Oh, hi!" She giggled.

"I just got here. Everything's ready. Can you send her outside?" He asked, checking his position in relation to the door. Not too close, not too far. He did some quick mental calculations and took one precise step back.

Cassandra giggled again. "Yup, we'll be right out! Ooh, this is so exciting!" Another peal of childlike laughter, and he heard a muffled but extremely familiar voice ask who was on the phone. His heartbeat sped up and he felt a smile automatically come to his face. "Oh, it's no one -" Cassandra's airy dismissal was cut off as she hung up.

He put his phone in his pocket and took a deep, steadying breath, straightening his posture and facing the door determinedly.

A minute passed - well, 45.6 seconds, and it felt like both an hour and less than a nanosecond. Reid couldn't remember ever being so nervous.

The library doors opened and two women stepped out. Well, one stepped out and the other was unceremoniously pushed, irritation making her British accent more pronounced.

"- Really, Cassandra, I don't understand what's going on! First you tell me to dress up for a girls' night out, then you tell me to meet you at the bloody _library_ of all places, then you make me wait around while you do some blasted _paperwork_ when I could be -" Hermione finally saw him and froze, the place where she could be never leaving her lips as her dark brown eyes widened in the most comical, most beautiful look of surprise he'd ever seen.

He smiled nervously. "When you could be dancing with me?"

The petite redhead beside her let out a barely audible 'awww'.

Hermione blinked, delight and confusion wrinkling her nose adorably. "What - how -"

He gestured to the redhead. "I found the library's number in the phonebook and Cassandra picked up."

A beatific smile lit her face, and he forgot how to breathe for a moment. "Spencer Reid, you are utterly devious." She said, shaking her head. "And you too, Cassie? I never thought you had it in you!"

Cassandra only giggled (she really did that an awful lot) and said, "I'll lock up tonight, Hermione. Have fun, you two!" Then with a surprising amount of tact, she slipped back inside the building and closed the door quietly behind her.

Hermione laughed softly, then looked back at him. He didn't know what his facial expression must be, but she blushed. "What?"

He didn't respond right away, so completely enchanted by the sight of her. Garcia had told him constantly that he knew nothing about women's fashion, but he knew that Hermione's dress was truly fantastic; a satiny golden thing that bared her shoulders, showed off her petite waist and swirled around her shapely legs. Her curls were soft and loose around her face and she was blushing and smiling and he just could not look away.

"You look…" He struggled to find the right word and simply shook his head, grinning.

Her blush deepened and she smiled almost shyly. "You look quite handsome yourself, doctor." She nodded at the suit he had last worn to JJ's wedding.

Spencer decided it was time to put away the guy stunned speechless by a pretty girl, and be the man this beautiful woman wanted to go on a date with. He purposefully stepped forward and lifted the umbrella to accommodate them both, and offered her his arm. "Would you do me the honor?" He said formally, but with cheeky smile.

"Why, doctor," She grinned back and gently grasped his arm. "The honor is all mine."

It was a short drive to the next location, and Spencer gently persuaded Hermione into letting him cover her eyes while they walked from their parking spot to their destination. It was still raining, but the rainfall had softened into something gentle and romantic, or maybe it was just the woman who kept smiling under his hands that made it seem so.

He leaned down and said next to her ear, "Okay, here we are." And he took his hand away from her eyes.

She gasped.

He had led them to Miss Muffin's Teapot, Hermione's favorite cafe and the place they had first gotten to know each other. The patio where they had sat out in the sunshine had been cleared of furniture, and dozens of umbrellas were suspended in the air above the paved ground, keeping it dry. Strands of twinkling fairy lights were wound around the umbrellas made the whole space glow, along with the lights in the cafe. Inside the cafe, a pair of musicians were playing the piano and violin, accompanied by the falling rain.

Hermione turned to him, her face glowing. "Spencer! You did all this? How?"

He flicked his wrist and presented her with a flower and a wink. "Magic."

She looked startled, then laughed. "I could almost believe that right now."

He smiled down at her and carefully tucked the blossom behind her ear. "I said I was going to take you dancing." He put down his umbrella and stepped onto the patio. He held out his hand. "Shall we?"

The lights above them twinkled in her smiling eyes like starlight. "We shall." She said, and took his hand.

* * *

" _(i don't what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all the roses)" -e.e. Cummings, somewhere i have never travelled gladly beyond_

* * *

 **Author's note: Hope this was romantic enough for you! Also, Garcia is ridiculously fun to write. She's a riot. I tried to do her justice!**

 **Thank you for all your amazing reviews and support! Y'all are seriously the best.**

 **Einstein said time is relative, but when I say the next update is coming soon, I do mean soon!**


	7. Chapter 7

" _Now I think we are friends, this girl and me. On her birthday it was she who gave a gift - to me." -Markus Zusak, the Book Thief_

* * *

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT CAN'T BE FIXED?" Penelope Garcia slammed her beringed hands onto the counter, sending the bangles around her wrists spinning and clattering at the violent action.

The barely-out-of-adolescence young man flinched backwards at the shrill voice, eyes wide and stuttering in response, "I-I d-d-don't know what t-to t-tell you, m-m-miss. The entire system is completely fried from the inside out. I've never seen anything like it before."

Garcia squinted at him in irate silence until he squirmed. "I'm sorry, did you get that little spiel from a script to a trashed TV show pilot about computer hacking or are you actually a walking geek stereotype in real life?"

"Um… I-I d-don't know...?" He managed to sputter, blinking rapidly.

Garcia rubbed her temples and sighed deeply before visibly getting herself under control. "Listen, honey, I'm sorry I yelled at you before. I thought you were gonna be my technology wizard, my Merlin of modem repair, but clearly you are only an incompetent if well-meaning Inspector Lestrade when I clearly need a Sherlock."

He stared at her blankly.

"Oh no. Oh dear" Garcia shook her head sadly. "Oh my sweet child, if you didn't understand a single reference that I just used, then you don't deserve to touch a computer. And I say that with love." He blinked, trying to decide whether to be offended or not.

Garcia didn't wait for him to figure it out and dug around into her enormous leopard-print purse and fished out a list written in sparkly gel pen on psychedelic stationery. She slid it across the counter. "Lucky for you, young Gregory -"

"Uh, m-my name is Brian -"

She gently cupped his cheek. "No, it's not." She said sympathetically. He frowned, confused. She smiled patronizingly and patted his head. "Okay now, Greg, lucky for our mutual safety and sanity, I have prepared for the eventuality of your inevitable inferiority and wrote down what I need to make the repairs on my own." She tapped the list with one acrylic nail. "You can read, right?"

Brian-AKA-Greg picked up the list and stared at it. He glanced back up at her nervously. "I'll, um, go see what we have in the, um, stockroom. You can, um, wait… here… I guess?" Then he scurried off faster than she thought possible.

Garcia watched him go. "Poor baby." Then she spun on one hot pink stiletto heel and began to peruse the tech-repair storefront equipment at a businesslike pace. She was busy dissecting a computer with her mind when the bell above the front door jingled cheerfully to announce the arrival of a new customer.

A short huff of a sigh. "Why is it that every bloody time I come here, there's no one at the register?" A feminine voice muttered.

"You're probably better off on your own," Garcia called over her shoulder absently. "The new kid is kind of a joke. You just can't get good IT help these days." She turned around to face the other person with her most winning smile. She found herself looking at a young woman with the most impressively curly hair she'd ever seen on Caucasian person this side of the eighties, dressed in disappointingly plain colors.

"Oh, thanks." The young woman smiled back, and Garcia decided she could overlook some boring fashion choices in favor of a smile of such genuine warmth. "And you're absolutely right." She shrugged thin shoulders and sighed ruefully. "I'm ever so glad Ernie decided to keep this place open after he retired, but it's just not quite the same without him."

Garcia gasped, pleasantly surprised. "You know Ernie? I _love_ Ernie!"

The woman laughed sweetly, and Garcia found she really enjoyed the sound. "Ernie was a godsend when I moved here from Britain and had to find a new electronics supplier."

"Oh, my new foreign friend, Lady Luck must have smiled upon your immigration to these United States because you definitely came to the right place." Garcia said grandly, before frowning in the direction of the stockroom door. "Although it seems both of us might need to blow this popsicle stand in favor of some actual quality service."

"You're probably right." The woman admitted. She shook her head. "Blast it all, and I really needed some new shielded cables today. My electromagnetic compatibility is all out of whack on my PC."

Garcia's manicured fingers flew to cover her painted-pink lips. "Oh my gravy goodness, what new friend factory created your model?" The woman's eyebrows lifted. "You build computers?" Garcia clarified.

"Oh," She laughed, pushing her mass of hair behind her shoulders. "Yes, I do."

"Just for fun or is it your job?"

"Hmm." After a moment of contemplation, she shrugged. "Both, I suppose. It started as a necessity that grew into enjoyment."

"Oh, what a beautifully vague story about the resilience of the human spirit and the triumph of modern technology." Garcia sighed dreamily. The woman laughed without a hint of mockery. Garcia beamed brighter. "Okay, I must simply have your number so we can get together and talk shop over a cup of caffeine."

"Oh, you are speaking my language." The British woman grinned. "That sounds lovely. Hold on a second…" She patted her pockets searchingly. "I had to get a new number recently because someone tried to hack me, can you believe it? Anyway, I haven't got it memorized just yet. Here it is!" She retrieved a slip of paper.

Garcia snapped a picture of the paper with her smartphone. "Oh that's so funny, I actually am here at this shop because I work for the FBI as a technical analyst and my entire system shut down following a digital trail." She paused. "I don't know if I should have told you that." She admitted.

The woman laughed again. "Oh, don't fret," She reassured Garcia. "I'm a librarian now, but I used to work for the British government and I quite understand the endless and exhausting maze of protocol and classification."

Garcia just gazed at her for a moment. "This may be too soon, but I think I love you."

The woman blinked in surprise, then laughed delightedly. "You must be the most colorful person I have ever met, and believe me, I have met some _very_ colorful people." She said bluntly, but not unkindly. Then she added, "By the way, those shoes are absolutely smashing! Where did you get them?"

Garcia beamed as she basked in the dawning rays of female friendship. She stuck out her hand. "Penelope Garcia." She introduced herself.

The young woman took her hand and shook it firmly with a bright smile.

"Hermione Granger."

* * *

"Yoohoo, Doctor Who!" Reid glanced up immediately, grateful for any distraction from the tedium of doing paperwork (apparently being able to read ridiculously fast did not translate into being able to _write_ ridiculously fast). He was mildly surprised to see Garcia prancing her way over to him in all her usual multicolored glory.

"Hey, Garcia, what's up?"

She leaned against his desk and propped her chin up on her hand. "Oh, nothing, just wanted to say to my favorite nerdy birdy." She winked playfully.

Reid smiled and shook his head at his friend and coworker. "You do know I'm a profiler, right?"

Garcia immediately stood up straight and pouted, hands planted on her hips. "And I usually love you for it, but sometimes I hate you for it. Do _you_ know _that_?"

He merely raised his eyebrows. This was not the first time Garcia had expressed her frustration on the team using their profiling skills on her, intentionally or not, and it wouldn't be the last.

"Oh al _right."_ Garcia dramatically slumped back down to lean on his desk again. Then she beamed at him, cheerful as ever. "What are you doing for your two days off?"

"Hey baby girl, what's this? You stepping out on me?" Derek Morgan stood up from his desk and came around to sling an arm around Garcia's shoulders. He pressed his free hand against his heart. "You're gonna break my heart, doll."

"I never break my toys." Garcia flirted.

"My two days off?" Reid ignored their antics. "On the increasingly diminishing chance that we don't get called on a case, I'll probably just hang out at home. Read some books. Work on my latest paper."

"Whoa, slow down, party animal." Morgan muttered sarcastically.

"Yes, yes, yes, that all sounds just adorably scholarly and sad." Garcia waved her hand dismissively. "But what if your most _favorite_ person in the entire world, your own fairy godmother of social interaction Penelope Garcia, wanted just the _teensiest_ smidgen of your time?"

Reid's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What do you want, Garcia?"

"Probably wants to marathon one of those weird tv shows they watch and check for plot holes." Emily Prentiss joined the conversation by rolling her desk chair in their direction.

"Uh that would be incorrect, my statuesque seductress." Garcia said imperiously. "Reid and I do not _watch_ tv shows that contain plot holes because that's just sloppy script writing and it is not to be borne."

"Wait, can you just tell me what you want me to do this weekend?" Reid interrupted before the conversation could derail again. Whenever Garcia was involved, you never knew what fifty topics would be covered in the span of a few sentences.

"Ah yes, straight to the heart of the matter, that's why I love you Reid. Always so straightforward." Garcia said graciously.

"Um, sorry Garcia, but have you _met_ Reid?" Morgan interrupted incredulously. Emily stifled a laugh.

"I can be straightforward!" Reid protested, glaring at his friends.

"Yes, my little snuggly duckling, of course you can," Garcia cooed reassuringly. Reid made a face at his new nickname. Morgan snickered until Emily kicked him with one long leg.

" _Ow -_ woman, why are you so _abusive_ to me?"

"Oh, woman up, why don't you."

" _Dar_ lings, please, I'm trying to have a civilized conversation with our doctoral colleague." Garcia reprimanded the bickering pair absently, adjusting her bright fuchsia eyeglasses and piercing him with her gaze.

Reid suddenly, irrationally wondered if this is what a goldfish felt like when the family cat stared at them through the glass of the fishbowl.

"Now, Spencer - can I call you Spencer?"

"Garcia, you've known me for years, of course you can -"

" _Buono. Grazie caro._ Now, Spencer, you are a healthy, handsome, virile, _eligible_ young gentleman, are you not?" Garcia said, arching a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

Emily wrinkled her nose. "Virile? I'm sorry I ever joined this conversation." Morgan nodded, looking like he couldn't decide if he was amused or weirded out.

"Uh, sure?" Spencer replied awkwardly.

"Of course you are!" Garcia declared. "And yet, your forays into the deliciously dangerous world of romance are few and far between. Which is simply preposterous." She threw her hands into the air, unbalancing Morgan who fell backward with a rather unmanly yelp. " _Preposterous_ , I say!"

"Um - thank you? I think?"

"Awww," Garcia patted his head delicately with a benevolent smile. "You're so welcome." He smiled back, a little unsure. "Anyway, I stand by my earlier statement that it is very preposterous, but less so when I take into account that obviously not just any old floozy that waltzes past you in high heels and carrying a book is worthy of your little genius heart."

"Floozy?" Emily commented.

"High heels?" Morgan focused on.

"Why does she have to have a book?" Reid demanded. The other three just looked at him. He shrugged sheepishly, "Okay maybe that was a fair assessment."

"See I'm not so bad at profiling, either!" Garcia crowed.

"Yeah, that was some Sherlock-level deduction, baby girl." Morgan teased.

Garcia spun around and fixed him with a keen look. Morgan smiled charmingly. "Normally I would verbally eviscerate you for being so condescending, my macho choco-taco," Garcia began true to form, "but I am so proud you just made a literary reference beyond Kurt Vonnegut or Chuck Palahniuk, however elementary - ha! See what I did there? - that I'll let your slip of the tongue stay just that. Don't squander my mercy, subject."

"You are a beacon of beauty and grace, fair lady." Morgan groveled.

Reid seriously contemplated a quick getaway if his flirtatious friends continued distracting each other but unfortunately the heat-seeking missile otherwise know as the USS Garcia had him in her sights again. "Now, my little genderbent Rapunzel stuck up in his tower of intellect and insecurity, I may have found you a princess to climb up those gloriously greasy locks and save you from damselhood."

"Progressive." Prentiss approved Garcia's spin on the fairytale classic.

"Genderbent?" Morgan asked in morbid fascination.

"Greasy?!" Reid said indignantly, touching his hair self-consciously.

"Thank you, I'll explain later, and no offense." Garcia answered them patiently. "And as usual, you are all missing the glaringly obvious point!" She said, exasperated. They all looked back at her blankly. "I found the perfect girl for Reid!" She squealed, hopping in place and clapping her hands delightedly.

Three pairs of eyes widened and blinked rapidly in shock.

"Really?" Another feminine voice said excitedly. They all turned in the direction of the voice as JJ walked over, eyes gleaming with the promise of office gossip. "The perfect girl for Spence?"

"Um…" Reid spoke up hesitantly.

"Omigosh, she is just _so_ cute, and smart, and she likes building computers!" Garcia gushed to the other blonde.

"A cute computer nerd?" Morgan chuckled.

Emily promptly whacked him on the arm. "Hello, sexist stereotype?"

Morgan opened his mouth, then paused and shrugged. "Yeah I deserved that one."

"You deserve all of them." Emily said drily.

"Garcia…" Reid tried again.

"What's she look like? Do you have a picture?" JJ pressed.

"Well, she's brunette, and -"

"Garcia!" The chatter stopped as Reid stood up with a raised voice. Garcia blinked owlishly at him, and he softened his next words with a grateful smile. "I'm sure she's great, but I'm not interested."

"What?" Garcia looked like he had just dropkicked a kitten into a pile of rabid dogs. "Why?"

"Yeah, hang on, kid, it can't hurt to at least meet the girl." Morgan chipped in, ever the loyal sidekick to Garcia's questing heroine archetype.

Reid shrugged. "I don't want to meet anyone." He said simply, smiling as Hermione's lovely features filled his mind. _Anyone else._

"Actually, Reid, I don't see why you shouldn't give it a shot." Emily said thoughtfully. "And I say this with love, but after all, when was the last time you went on a date?"

"Oh, Spence, she sounds so nice!" JJ pleaded.

Reid put up his hands to stop any further persuading. He smiled and shook his head. "Listen, guys, I know you mean well, but I don't need to be set up on a date. I'm perfectly happy with where I'm at and who I know right now."

Garcia looked ready to cry or maybe even physically attack him, but Morgan stopped her by touching his hand to her arm. He regarded the younger man's earnest face seriously and nodded slowly. "Alright, kid."

Reid nodded back with a half-grin. "Thanks, Morgan." His phone buzzed once and he flipped it open, scanning the screen before looking up with a bigger grin. "Sorry, guys, I gotta go. I'll see you in about 60 hours, okay?"

He stuffed the rest of his paperwork in his bag then with an uncharacteristic jaunty salute, walked out, whistling a little off-key but happy tune.

As Prentiss and JJ went back to their respective work spaces and Garcia turned to Morgan to console her wounded matchmaking pride, Aaron Hotchner and David Rossi stood on the landing outside their offices looking down at their team, thinking about what they had just seen.

"Interesting." Hotch murmured, his mind carefully examining one of Reid's statements. _I'm perfectly happy with where I'm at and who I know… who I know…_

"Is it?" Rossi asked mildly. "I'm not really interested in what just happened at all. But I _am_ interested in that glass of scotch we were just discussing."

Hotch smiled. "I'm right behind you, Dave." And he followed his old friend into his office without another thought to who Reid might know.

* * *

" _Sam and Patrick looked at me. And I looked at them. And I think they knew. Not anything specific really. They just knew. And I think that's all you can ever ask from a friend." - Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower_

* * *

 **Author's Note: *happy sigh* I love writing Garcia and the team. It's so much fun. Anyway, this was just a fluffy little chapter to hold you guys over until I get the next bit written. I promise the next one will be full of Reid/Hermione interaction. Sorry I made you wait so long for this update; me and my family have been dealing with a lot of craziness recently. Craziness is not conducive to down time for creative writing, much to my endless chagrin.**

 **Also, all you Harry Potter fans should check out my new story Aftershocks, featuring the one and only Padma Patil. It's worth it, I promise!**

 **Review review review!**


	8. Chapter 8

" _We were together. I forgot the rest." -Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass_

* * *

A dull and harsh buzzing briefly filled the apartment, lazily commanding the attention of the sole inhabitant. Spencer rushed over to the intercom on the wall, sweeping critical eyes over his newly-cleaned apartment one last time before checking the small screen on the panel that corresponded to the security camera mounted over the front door. He grinned, recognizing the petite figure fussing with her mane of bushy curls. He pushed the "talk" button then had a brief moment of panic upon realizing he hadn't planned his greeting ahead of time.

"U-uh, hey - er - Hermione." He immediately cringed and hit his head against the wall next to the intercom. _Note to self: the hypothesis "It Doesn't Matter How Well You Know a Pretty Girl, You Will Still Be Dorky Around Her Sometimes", has been confirmed._

"Hello Spencer." Her voice, as always, was warm and welcoming and not the least bit awkward.

"You can come on up," he said, deciding to get the inevitably awkward 'well, this is my apartment' scene over and done with. He was about to press the button to open the front door for her when her sharp voice, slightly fuzzed with static, blazed over the speaker:

"Oh no you don't! I'm not coming up, _you're_ coming _down."_ She declared.

Reid frowned. That wasn't part of their pre-arranged plans. She was supposed to come over and they were going to hang out at his apartment. "But -"

"Spenc er Reid, it is a beautiful day and we are going to spend it outside!" Hermione said, turning her playfully scowling face up to the camera. "So put on your shoes and whatever because we are going on a bloody walk!" A beat, then, "And no books!"

Reid couldn't help but laugh. "Yes ma'am… But first may I ask what's in your hand there?" She glanced down, and even though he couldn't tell he just knew she was blushing.

"...alright, new plan." She said decisively. "I'll come upstairs and put _my_ book away, and _then_ we'll go on a bloody walk."

He pressed the 'unlock' button without saying anything, chuckling to himself. Not a minute later when he opened his apartment door to her swift knock, she breezed past him with a quick kiss to his cheek in greeting that left him holding the door open, blushing and blinking like an infatuated teenager as she bustled about his apartment, chattering away.

"Your flat is quite nice, Spencer. It could use some more personal touches to be sure, but it's rather more homey than I expected given how much traveling your job entails. I almost expected to find just a mattress and a suitcase! But look at you, with furniture and lamps and bookcases and everything! I'm absolutely charmed." She laughed, dropping her book on the coffee table Spencer used more for book accessibility from the couch rather than feng shui.

Halfway through her little speech he had gathered his wits only to be again struck dumb by how _pretty_ she looked, fresh-faced with a glowing smile, clad in a rose-hued sundress with her hair cascading loose and wild around her shoulders; not to mention the simple yet astonishing fact that she was _standing in his apartment._

Next thing he knew, she had gathered his wallet and keys and cellphone off the shelf where he kept them and was casually tucking them into his pockets, saying, "Oh, good, you're already wearing your shoes. It's warm enough that you probably don't need a jacket - have I mentioned that you look rather dashing in this sweater vest? Because you do," She interrupted herself, shooting him a cheeky wink before frowning. "Hmm. Maybe I _do_ want you to wear a jacket, to keep away all the other women with a weakness for a bloke in a sweater vest." She quickly appraised him, then tsked and smiled, "Oh blast it all, it probably wouldn't help a bit. You are just too handsome, Dr. Reid." She sighed, but her eyes were sparkling.

Spencer randomly wondered if she knew Garcia, because this whirlwind rambling of hers knocking him off-balance was somewhat reminiscent of the vivacious technical analyst.

"Well," She said brightly, slipping her arm through his, "Are you ready?"

There was really only one possible answer. Spencer smiled down at her, lightly touching the hand wrapped around his bicep, and said, "Yes."

* * *

The breathless rush she had swept into his day with (that she later admitted with a blush was borne out of nervousness; he was glad he wasn't alone in that but decided it was good at least one of them had the courage and confidence to keep the awkwardness at bay as they figured out whatever it was between them) had settled into the euphoric ease he was beginning to get used to feeling with her as they ambled along in the sunlight to their favorite park.

The requisite chatting about their respective days had dwindled quite soon given that it was still morning and everything the both of them had done was in preparation for spending the day together. Now they walked in companionable silence, and once Spencer got done marveling over the fact that their entwined arms had led to the more comfortable and thrilling position of _holding hands_ , he debated over asking her the question that had risen in his mind.

That mental voice that sounded way too much like Morgan scoffed at him, _just ask her already, kid. It's not like you're proposing marriage._

Spencer immediately shoved that thought and voice into a box. Then he locked the box, wrapped it in chains, set it on fire, and buried the ashes. He had only been on _one_ date with Hermione, he had _no_ business thinking about her and ...that _word_ … in the same thought! And he absolutely refused to examine or even acknowledge the strange and profound _yearning_ that thought had uncovered in him.

(...at least, not yet.)

Mental Morgan was right, though, he might as well ask her what was on his mind.

"So, um, I know it hasn't even been an hour since we met up, and I'm really sorry if I'm being too forward or making assumptions or whatever, but I was, uh, wondering, um, if you, well…"

Her laughter mercifully put an end to his graceless stammers. "It's nice to know I'm not the only one who prattles on when I'm nervous." She gently teased him. "Go on, then, spit it out."

He grinned sheepishly. "Well, I've got the next two days off before I have to go back to work. And I was wondering if you would spend them with me?"

He had to wait less than a second for her response. She beamed at him. "Oh, how sweet! Spencer, I would love to! And I am simply honored to be considered worthy companionship for your work holiday." She said earnestly.

"Worthy companionship?" He repeated incredulously. "Hermione, you are the _only_ companionship I could ever want or need for my whole life, let alone two days."

She stopped walking and stared at him, speechless.

Spencer had barely started to panic about what he had just said when she suddenly rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him.

It lasted only a moment, only a heartbeat. Spencer had just enough time for his senses to be overwhelmed by her - the sight of her sun-soaked chocolate curls and rosy cheeks, her fragrance of ink and paper mixed with something fresh and floral and yet warm and mellow, the feel of her small warm hands gripping his arms, a gust of peppermint and chocolate and cinnamon on her breath, then the taste of her chapstick on his own mouth - before it was over and she had stepped away, eyes wide and face rapidly turning red.

Spencer blinked, quickly and wildly glancing at the world around him and wondering how it was possible for it to look exactly the same when obviously _everything_ had changed.

She kissed him.

She _kissed_ him!

 _She_ kissed _him!_

The shock at her own actions had faded from her still-blushing face and now she was regarding him a bit apprehensively as she waited for his reaction, vulnerability and defiance blazing in her eyes.

This time, the voice in his head didn't sound like Morgan at all, it was entirely him, standing and shouting and waving his arms around manically. _SAY SOMETHING YOU IDIOT!_

But all he could do was stare at her, at this impossible beautiful creature that _liked_ him and had gone on a _date_ with him and had _kissed_ him… so engulfed was he by his own emotions that he spoke not a single word.

But now he had waited too long, and she would wait no longer. The red darkened past surprise to embarrassment and shame, and her bright eyes dimmed in disappointment. "I'm sorry." The words came out measured and careful, but still had to be forced past her gritted teeth. "I was too forward. I shouldn't have -"

It was the _shouldn't_ that did it. The fact that she was regretting her actions immediately cleared the haze Spencer was in, and he told himself, _I'm not going to_ say _something, I'm going to_ do _something._

And so the genius did perhaps one of the smartest things he'd ever done.

With the same uncharacteristic agility that had saved her from those falling books back when they first met, Spencer reached out and swiftly pulled her to him and kissed her just as sweetly and intensely and briefly as she had kissed him.

Before he could again be overwhelmed by her, Spencer moved away but kept hold of her hands; there was a wrong to be righted. He looked directly into her surprised but slowly shining eyes, the beginnings of a hopeful smile suspended on her lips. Still, he waited, and after a minute of quiet threaded with anticipation, he grinned. "How is that we both talk too much when we're nervous, but you're the one that always leaves me speechless?" He shrugged a little. "Now we're even."

She let out a breath of laughter, and he joined her before growing serious. "Hermione, you should never have to regret or apologize for putting yourself out there, especially if you were brave enough to do it before I could. It's just, you constantly amaze me." He grinned again. "I should know better by now. You're never going to be less amazing, and even though I know I'll never get used to how incredible you are, you should never have to wonder how I feel to the point where you want to apologize." He frowned a little, hating himself for that. But her hands were still so warm and strong in his, and her brown eyes were meeting his without looking away, so he continued with a small smirk, "Be patient with me, though. I know there will still be things about you that leave me speechless. Really, it's pretty amazing I'm able to get coherent sentences out while just being around you." He said, playfully but honestly.

Hermione smiled fully now. "Oh, Spencer, you…" She shook her head and with a steadying breath started over. "I have some very good friends whom I love and who love me. We have been through everything together, and through it all I knew they loved and wanted and needed me. I knew it… but they never said it." She looked up at him, first shyly, then with all the courage and honesty he knew she possessed. The fierce look on her face belied her gentle words.

"Spencer, you were the first person to say it. And you're just such a brilliant man and well, in case you haven't noticed I fancy you quite a lot…" She huffed, blushing again. "I've always been the sensible sort of girl, but you make me brave in ways I never thought I would be or would have to be or would _want_ to be." Her fierceness deepened and went around the bend to something soft and vulnerable. "But I don't _want_ to be sensible with you. I want to be _brave_ for you; I want to be brave _with_ you." She finished with a helpless little shrug and simple words that were not so simple after all. "I want to be with you."

Everything inside him was exploding apart and settling into place all at the same time, like fireworks bursting against a quiet night sky. But Spencer would not wait for it to be over before he spoke, because he knew and hoped this feeling would never be over, and he wanted to see what it was like to speak now. What would his words look and feel like with the colors and sparks in his heart?

He smiled. "I want to be with you too. Seems sensible to me."

This time, as he leaned down to kiss her, he took his time, so he could watch light leap into her eyes and hear her breath catch. So he could count the freckles on her nose and see each individual eyelash. So he could feel the tickle of her hair as he brushed it away to cradle her face in his hands before weaving his fingers into the thick curling tresses. So he could savor the simple feel of leaning his forehead against hers, of moving his hands from her hair to press against her back and draw her close and to touch and tilt her chin to meet his even as she turned it herself.

This time, when he kissed her, he was not overwhelmed. It was a slow and steady dive underwater after a deep breath of air. It was the feeling of flying and knowing he would not fall with ground underneath their feet. But even so, just for a second everything he lost himself and then that second was over and he found himself again in her and she was _Hermione_ , it was _her_ hands soft yet calloused in his hair and wrapped around his neck. It was _her_ uncontrollable hair that was still slightly damp at the roots from washing falling around the two of them, brushing skin and clothes and ticking his face and hands. And it was her lips that yes, tasted like chapstick and the peppermints he knew they had at the library desk, and it was taste of chocolate and cinnamon because she had coffee today instead of tea… and it was while kissing her that for the first time Spencer did not think her some impossible creature, though she was beautiful.

She was real and she was here and she was Hermione, and that was far better than any fantasy. For the kiss was not perfect and neither were they, it was a little bit clumsy and a little bit awkward but more importantly it was honest and brave and it was wholly them; wholly theirs.

And this time, when the kiss ended and after they had lived in that moment of mingled breath and entwined hands and bright eyes so close that was all they could see, they moved forward and continued on their walk in the park, in silence but no longer speechless.

* * *

" _That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out." -_ _Andrea Gibson_

* * *

 **Author's note: Well, this chapter was supposed to be something completely different but these two crazy kids ran away with my plot (I use the term loosely, clearly this story is mostly cavity-inducing fluff with a dash of angst for flavor) and it felt natural and right so I let them. And now we have The First Kiss (TM)! Yay for hard-to-write romantic milestones! But I put on my sappy music playlist, chugged some caffeine, and handled it. So let me know what you think!**

 **And, thank you guys for being so patient with me. I know this update was FAR too long in coming, and the continued support from old and new readers is humbling and inspiring.**

 **On the upside, this runaway chapter means I have the next one mostly planned out and am planning on posting it as soon as possible.**

 **Also, remember to check out my other story, "Aftershocks"! Tell your friends!**


	9. Chapter 9

" _She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second." -Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook_

* * *

Hermione and Spencer kept walking, and as it always has been and always will be, eventually they came to a fork in the road.

In one direction, the pathway continued on in its endless languid circle around the park. But in the other direction, a smaller path branched off and moseyed its way impishly over to a modest little playground.

Spencer had walked around this park dozens of times before (93 to be exact, soon to be 94) and so of course he knew about the playground. But since he was a grown man with many other troubling adult thoughts taking up space in his mind, he had noted the existence of the playground exactly once and then filed it away in his brain where all the other miscellaneous and mostly useless information lived, waiting for their time to shine - probably in a case.

Thankfully, he hadn't needed to remember this playground in any case which would undoubtedly involved children which was always awful, and since he didn't particularly need to know about it right now and his brain was happily focusing completely on Hermione, it continued being miscellaneous and useless information to him.

But at the fork in the road Hermione stopped short, forcing Spencer to stop along with her or risk having his arm yanked out of its socket. Morgan always teased Spencer for not being very athletic, but the ease with which this petite woman could manhandle him had Spencer flipping through his mental phonebook for gyms in his area. He followed Hermione's gaze and found her intensely scrutinizing the playground swing set nestled beneath a Dogwood tree that bloomed with aesthetically pleasing pink and white blossoms, as if she were on the precipice of a life-changing decision.

He opened his mouth to ask her what she was thinking about when abruptly her face changed, lighting up like a Christmas tree. She shot him a positively devilish grin before unceremoniously yanking him down the path towards the playground. "Hermione!" He yelped involuntarily. He stumbled and Hermione, obviously deciding that he was only holding her back, dropped his hand and took off at a buoyant sprint. He blinked at her surprising speed and before he knew it, she was sitting on one of the swings which creaked benevolently from use rather than her weight. She beamed at him and waved. "Come on, Spencer!" She called, laughing.

He shook his head in amusement but her enthusiasm was infectious. He ambled over to her, quickening his pace at her impatient bouncing. He awkwardly folded his lanky body into the child's swing next to hers and smirked at her. "Care to share with the class why our quest has taken this detour, Frodo?"

"Frodo never detoured from his quest, Spencer, as you well know." She corrected him primly. "Besides, I think I'm rather more like Gandalf, personally."

Spencer's eyebrows lifted. "The wizard?"

Hermione's lips twitched and her eyes sparkled with some secret source of mirth. "Something like that, yes." Then she twisted the chains of her swing so she could properly face him "And as for our 'detour', it is nothing more than sheer childish impulsivity," She informed him, "and no small measure of nostalgia. I grew up living right across the street from a lovely little park, and I could swing for hours on end. It was my favorite thing to do, besides reading of course."

"Of course." He agreed with a grin.

She wrinkled her nose at him and untwisted to gaze wistfully at the rest of the playground. "I had a rather normal childhood, I'd like to think, aside from my unusually academic interests… but my schooling years were a good deal less innocent. I was living the kind of fairy tale most children only dream of, but it quickly became more of a nightmare… I don't remember the last time I was on a playground, or had a snowball fight… I don't remember ever being a child." She whispered. Her eyes were haunted in the way Spencer saw in the mirror.

He was concerned, and confused. If she was talking about her secretive government career, he would understand. But the ghosts living in her eyes right now weren't the remains of a lost childhood… this was only the look someone got when they carried the weight of someone else's fate.

"Hermione…"

Her eyes drifted over to him and she sucked in a breath at whatever expression was on his face. "Don't ask me," She said. It wasn't a plea, not quite, but it was no less tortuous a tone. "Don't ask me, because I won't tell you."

Spencer shoved aside the multitude of questions that had immediately crowded his Broca's Aphasia and simply asked, "Why?"

She seemed a little disappointed by his question, but understanding. Spencer hated the fact that he might have let her down somehow by asking that, but he also didn't feel like he had done anything wrong.

"I won't tell you… at least not yet," She emphasized, "Because I don't want you to save me."

(It was an uncanny ability of women, to turn their words into sighs.)

Spencer was a doctor and a scientist and a government employee. He surrounded himself with facts and statistics to try to make sense of the senseless tragedies he dealt with every day. On his days off work, he drowned himself in academic pursuits that had nothing to do with criminology or psychology. His teammates had consistently made jokes about him being a robot, more to do with his eidetic memory than anything else, but they wouldn't be far off emotionally. He had been raised by a mentally absent mother and now he studied the minds of serial killers and rapists. Nothing in his entire life had allowed for safe and healthy emotional development.

To put it bluntly, he was a psychologist who didn't know what to do with his own feelings.

Hermione made him feel a _lot_ of feelings, and so far they had been almost entirely positive. She had burst into his life like fire but had stayed like daylight. Spencer was beginning to be fully aware of the depth and permanence of his feelings about and for her… at least the good ones.

Right now, he wasn't having a lot of good feelings. He could clearly identify worry, frustration, confusion and… helplessness?

Spencer had felt helpless before. He was no stranger to that particularly annoying feeling. But it was somewhat new to feel helpless because he wanted to help someone, but they wouldn't let him.

So Spencer decided it was time to deal in facts. He gazed seriously at Hermione and mentally took stock of everything he knew to be true about her. After a few long minutes, he nodded. "Okay."

She blinked at him, and tentative hope bloomed in her eyes. "Okay?"

He naturally reached out to hold her hand again. He intertwined their fingers together securely before explaining, "I know better than anyone that you can't save someone from their past. Besides… you're one of the strongest women I've ever known. I'm pretty sure it's you that does the saving most of the time." He smiled at the spark of pride she couldn't hide, and continued, "Of course I want you to tell me, and I wish you were ready to tell me now… but there are things I'm not ready to tell you either," (He could almost feel the smooth plastic of the pill bottle in his hand, heavier than a gun), "and... I trust you."

There wasn't much to say after that, it turned out.

Hermione looked very serious. "There are things I haven't told you, Spencer, but I promise I have _never_ lied to you…. and I never will." She vowed.

"Then I will try not to ask questions you can't or won't answer." He promised in return, squeezing her hand harder.

Hermione smiled at him gratefully before saying dryly, "I don't imagine that many girlfriends are pleased to hear their boyfriend _won't_ try to get to know them better." She rolled her eyes. "What a solid foundation for a relationship."

Spencer surprised them both by laughing out loud. She waited for him to finish with a bemused look on her face, and through his chuckles and snorts he choked out, "Boyfriend?"

Her face went white, then red, then settled on a very bright shade of pink. "Oh _blast._ I've gone and done it again, haven't I?" She complained. "I keep forcing you to move faster than you want… I said we had a first date before we ever did, I told you I liked you first, I _kissed_ you first, and now I called you my bloody boyfriend!" She exclaimed.

Spencer was still laughing at the sheer surrealness of the situation, but her face suddenly fell. "I'm so sorry, Spencer… I don't want to push you into something you're not ready for… I don't want this if you don't want this and - mmph!"

(Spencer was beginning to like the practice of using kissing to get a point across.)

He pulled away before he could get too distracted and put his hands on her shoulders, grounding her to this moment and the words he said, which started out lighthearted. "Hello, my name is Spencer Reid, the most socially awkward and romantically clueless genius in the world. Have we met?"

Her lips twitched and she pressed them together firmly, clearly trying not to smile.

He slid his hands down her arms to grasp her hands again. "Hermione, if you hadn't done those things, it might have taken me literally _years_ \- well, at least a few really long months - to ask you out, let alone kiss you."

"That's what I'm _saying_ -"

Spencer rolled his eyes. "You know, kissing you is awesome and it's proving to be an effective method to get to you shut up, but I don't want to get in the habit of trivializing something so amazing. So if you could just let me finish, then I can kiss you the way I want to… for a very very long time."

Her eyes were very wide and her cheeks were very pink, but now she was also very quiet.

Spencer grinned, a little proudly but also a little sheepishly. "And, um, for the record, I wouldn't have interrupted you because I value your feelings and thoughts above almost everything else, but I think you were about to try to save me and that's kind of a double standard, Miss Granger. So I decided to be the strong woman for once and take initiative." He ended, only joking a little bit. He also thought Prentiss would be proud of his little speech.

Hermione was laughing. "I think you meant that to be a feminist statement, so I'll take it that way, because it started out so lovely." She smiled mischievously. "And I'd like to hurry this along so we can get to the 'kissing for a very very long time' part."

He swallowed. "Er - yeah - um, where was I?" He coughed and she giggled, clearly enjoying his being flustered. "Oh, right." He grew serious again, "Hermione, if you _ever_ think I don't want this, that I don't want _you_ , then I'm doing something _very_ wrong and you should break up with me _immediately_ because you deserve someone who _always_ wants you and _never_ makes you doubt that fact. Because that's what it is... a fact." He said softly but fervently. "It's a fact that I want you. I want this."

The breathless expression on her face stole his breath in return.

"And, um," he continued quietly, "Yeah. That's what you deserve. Even if it's not with me. And… because I'm socially awkward and romantically clueless, it might take me a few tries to get it right, but I promise I will be that for you. I will be what you deserve, for as long as you want me in return."

This time she kissed him, and they kissed for a very _very_ long time.

"You know," She said casually after they stopped kissing and were capable of coherent speech again, "I can't break up with you immediately if you're not my boyfriend."

"I'm not?" He quirked an eyebrow.

She arched one in return. "Well I certainly don't remember you asking me to be your girlfriend..."

Spencer grinned and joked, "Damn, I knew I forgot to do something."

She giggled, then added, "...and all this _kissing_ is rather forward for someone who's _not_ my boyfriend." She teased him, "I think I need a bit of... clarification."

She was clearly just giving him a hard time, but Spencer had warmed to the idea and decided that he was a man of his word. He would be what she deserved, and she deserved 'a bit of clarification'.

He glanced around and spotted something which gave him an idea. He stood up quickly, the force of his movement sending the swing wobbling into the backs of his knees and nearly knocking him over. "Hermione, close your eyes, and don't open them until I tell you too."

She looked confused and nothing short of suspicious, and opened her mouth obviously to question him, but he said, "Trust me." Her face softened and she nodded slowly. She closed her eyes, covering them with her hands for good measure.

Spencer waited until he was sure she wasn't peeking and he executed his spontaneous plan as quickly and discreetly as possible, then went to stand behind her and leaned down to say softly in her ear, "Okay, you can open your eyes now."

She opened her eyes much more slowly than he thought someone of her incredible curiosity and impatience would, and when she had fully absorbed her surroundings she frowned. "Why did you make me close my eyes? Everything looks the same." She said, and a tiny bit of disappointment seeped into her voice.

"Hmm." Spencer said, feigning confusion. "That's weird." He shrugged. "Oh well." He said with a dramatic sigh. "I guess there's only one thing left to do… you are sitting in a swing after all."

"Spencer, what are you -" Her words fell away with a gasp as he gave her a push that sent her swinging through the air. She began to laugh in delight, despite her confusion, and it only took a few more firm pushes for the movement to tug on his shoelaces, which he had tied to the chain of her swing and connected to a branch of the dogwood tree above the swing set, which shook the tree branch and Hermione found herself swinging in a shower of falling flowers. "Spencer!" She exclaimed in wonder. "How did you…"

Spencer grinned at his shoelaces. "Magic," He joked, remembering their first date, "and physics." Then, with a bit of sleight of hand he tossed something over her head into her lap as he pushed her.

With a nice display of reflexes Hermione caught the falling bookmark tied to some dogwood blossoms. She saw a familiar message in blue ink that said 'My IQ is 188', then flipped it over to see a new message written under the printed definition:

 _Eunoia (n.) beautiful thinking; a well mind._

 _-Hermione Granger (n.) beauty beyond definition in mind, body, and soul._

 _-Spencer Reid (n.) a socially awkward and romantically clueless genius, who wants more than anything for Hermione to be his girlfriend, and to be the boyfriend she deserves._

She smiled as slowly as the swing that was coming to a stop, and looked up to where Spencer now stood before her. He flicked his wrist, and presented her with one single flower, just like he did on their first date. "Will you be my girlfriend?" He asked out loud.

She reached out to him, but instead of taking the flower, she laced their fingers together and used the leverage to pull herself up and pull him down at the same time so that their faces were so close there was only space for one word.

Before she kissed him, she whispered, "Yes."

* * *

 _"I never felt magic as crazy as this_

 _I never held emotion in the palm of my hand_

 _Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree_

 _But now you're here_ _."_

 _-Nick Drake, Northern Sky_ _(paraphrased)_

* * *

 **Author's Note: A gentle interlude to make up for my absence. I've almost got the next chapter finished.**


	10. Chapter 10

**(I fixed the formatting issue. I have no idea why it was single-spaced, I did nothing different than I usually did in my posting process)**

 **Author's Note: Before you read the chapter, I just want to say I am utterly blown away so far by the response to 'Eunoia'. Over 150 reviews, 350+ favorites, and 580+ follows. I am so incredibly stunned, humbled, and thankful for your continued support and feedback. I'm so honored so many of you like my little story. I want to thank each one of you individually but that would be a very long author's note - even for me. So, I will settle for two incredibly inadequate words.**

 **Thank you.**

* * *

"We _were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print... We lived in the gaps between the stories." -_ _Margaret Atwood, the Handmaid's Tale_

* * *

"You know, I've never been in a real snowball fight." Spencer commented absently as they lazily swung side by side. The revelation held little weight to him, it was just a small factoid about his life that wasn't entirely worth mentioning, but that he felt like saying nonetheless.

It took him a second to realize that Hermione had stopped swinging altogether and was staring at him in open-mouthed shock. Feeling self conscious under her scrutiny but not sure why, he asked uncomfortably, "What?"

Her mouth closed and surprise receded from her expression, replaced with thoughtfulness. "It's funny… I do believe you know more about me than I know about you."

Spencer frowned, absorbing her statement. "What?" He repeated blankly.

She smiled. "It's funny because we just had a discussion about me keeping secrets from you." She treaded that topic lightly but carefully so as to not reopen the subject too soon. "But then you say something like 'I've never been in a real snowball fight' that I have absolutely no context for." She regarded him shrewdly, but still with a smile. "Spencer… this may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone is a profiler, no matter how smart they are." She said without an ounce of conceit.

He shrugged, feeling oddly shy. "I never thought you were profiling me, I just think…" He shrugged again, hating his redundancy, "It feels like you've always known me. I guess I sometimes forget that you haven't."

At this she smiled softly, then asked, "Spencer, what was your childhood like?"

An innocuous question, but the answer was far from simple. Spencer was silent for a long while, inwardly struggling with the idea of telling her about how he grew up. He was inexplicably, irrationally fearful that knowledge of who he was past would affect her feelings of who he was present.

He felt like the awkward kid who just wanted to look cool in front of the girl he liked.

...he didn't want her pity.

A John Ruskin quote floated not-so-randomly to the forefront of his mind. 'It is better to lose your pride with someone you love than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.'

Resolutely ignoring the implications of _that_ one particular word, he inwardly sighed as he recognized the truth of the quote.

"My mom…" The words left him before he was fully aware he was speaking. "My mom had - has schizophrenia." He couldn't bring himself to look at Hermione as he said this. "My dad left us because he couldn't handle her, I guess. She's a genius… way smarter than me. If she wasn't always so afraid, she could have done amazing things…" He trailed off, silently grieving for a life unlived. "When I was eighteen, I had her committed." He still hadn't completely forgiven himself for that. "I write to her every day."

"You took care of her." Hermione said solemnly.

He nodded, accepting that truth. "I took care of both of us. Someone had to." He winced, disliking the bitter turn of his words, and hurried to add, "I mean, okay, it's true that she wasn't much of a parent… but she was a great teacher. She read to me every night. I know she loved me… loves me. She just didn't really... mother me." He admitted, not unkindly.

"You couldn't be a child if she wasn't your parent." Hermione said gently. There was no judgement or pity on her face but Spencer began to regret his words. He was well aware of his mom's faults, but he was fiercely protective of her.

"But I think you're wrong about her… I think she did do amazing things." The conviction in her voice surprised Spencer, and he glanced at her with a hopeful question in his eyes. She smiled. "Loving someone is an amazing thing… and she clearly loved you. And you are quite amazing, Spencer Reid."

It was exactly what he needed to hear. People had so often criticized his mother for having a mental illness, like it was her fault she was sick or worse, that it made her less of a human being. People focused so much on her mental illness that they completely overlooked what an extraordinary woman she was. An imperfect woman, to be sure, and maybe even a limited woman, but an extraordinary one all same.

He grinned at Hermione, whose own smile brightened. "Thank you." He said, trying to fit all of his feelings into those two forever inadequate words.

She squeezed his hand. "You never told me about school." She mentioned, clearly thinking this was safer ground. But Spencer stiffened before he could control his bodily reaction to some very bad memories and her face flooded with concern.

Spencer sighed deeply and heavily. "I graduated from high school when I was twelve." He finally muttered, eyes fixed firmly at the ground. He didn't really need to say anything else.

Hermione was quiet for awhile. Then she said, "For a few years of my life, I had a relatively normal childhood. But I was advanced in academics and liked to read whereas other children preferred to play." She hesitated, then confessed, "I had little tolerance for people I thought had a lesser intelligence than me." She shook her head, curls flying about her shoulders as she sighed, "I went to a public primary school where I was bullied for being smart, and it reinforced my opinion that I was better than them. I thought they bullied me because they were jealous and so I was justified in looking down on them." She snorted. "I was a stuck up little know-it-all."

Spencer smiled despite himself, imagining a tiny, frizzy-haired, freckle-faced Hermione scowling over a book at mean children, like a little terrier facing down a Rottweiler.

Hermione continued in a tone of detached morbidity, "If God is real, then he must have marked me like Cain, for I got what was coming to me seven times over." She absently rubbed her forearm, then upon seeing Spencer's probing look explained cryptically, "The boarding school I transferred to was apart of a very... closed society. They don't like outsiders." She said shortly. "Once again, I encountered bullies, but they weren't mean to me because I was smart, they were mean because I was born. Those people didn't care how smart I was as long as I was a mud - I mean, as long as I was of low birth." She said bitterly.

She was silent until the bitterness faded into a thoughtful sort of sadness, like the clouds that remain after a storm. Then she spoke in a distant voice, and he knew her mind was not with him in the playground but far away in her past. "Cruelty is the inevitable outcome of someone believing themselves to be superior."

Spencer felt a bone-shaking, blood-boiling revulsion at the thought of what this brilliant and beautiful woman had experienced, for by her body language it was far worse than her words let on.

He managed to keep his reaction inward. He hadn't wanted her pity; he didn't think she would look kindly upon his.

"Low birth?" He decided to focus on that odd part of her explanation. "Did you go to school with kids descended from royalty or something?"

Her nose wrinkled. "Not at all. But many of my peers were born to some very old and powerful families, and they bloody well knew it." She said darkly, but then her voice and face cleared somewhat with nostalgia. "I was luckier than some people of my station. I had two very close friends who were open minded, loyal, and very protective." She laughed in a short burst. "But I spent so much time trying to keep them out of trouble that I didn't have time to worry about petty squabbles with ignorant children. Our problems were far greater than that. We had to grow up so fast..." Her voice trailed off into a melancholy pause.

"What were their names?" Reid asked, curious.

"Ron and Harry," She whispered, and in those names he could hear years of unfathomable intimacy and shared life experiences. The gratefulness was now tinged with an irrational envy. He said that it felt like he had always known Hermione, but the fact was he hadn't, and he really wished he had.

"We still have a lot to learn about each other, huh?" He said.

"Indeed! Like learning that someone hasn't ever been in a snowball fight!" Hermione teased him with a grin. Spencer was glad she was in a better mood, even if it was at his expense. Then she remarked, "Although it seems like we have more things in common than we realized. We both had rather unconventional childhoods."

"Unconventional? I think you mean bad." Spencer joked.

"Unconventional." Hermione said firmly, swatting at his arm.

Spencer didn't argue the terminology further, instead he asked thoughtfully, "Do you think we missed out on anything?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Clearly you did, if you've never been in a snowball fight."

Spencer sighed. "You're never going to let that go, are you?"

"It's a rite of passage!" Hermione insisted.

"And how would you know, Miss Unconventional Childhood?" He retorted.

She opened her mouth, finger poised indignantly in the air, then paused and cringed slightly. "Fair point." She conceded. "I don't have much room to talk, given that probably missed quite a few 'rites of passage' myself."

"What, do you want to draw up lists and compare?" Spencer joked.

Hermione lifted her eyebrows as if she were considering this. "Maybe!" She said with a touch of playful defiance.

Spencer laughed. "No way! That's like writing invitations to come to our pity party... I mean, it's not like we can redo our childhood. So why focus on things we never did; things we'll never do? I'd rather focus on the present." He finished with what he hoped was a charming, romantic smile.

But Hermione didn't seem to be paying attention to his final declaration of _carpe diem_ and was studying him with a expression of concentration and a glint of creativity and determination in her eyes.

Spencer felt oddly suspicious under her keen gaze. "What?" He asked warily.

Her lips curved into a slow, wide smile that was nearly feline and definitely mischievous. She sprang to her feet, easily avoiding the resulting chaotic movement of her swing. She tugged on his hands until he also stood and grinned up at him with a schemer's delight. "You have the next two days off, correct?"

"Yes..." He confirmed, the word coming slow in his confusion.

"Well, I just came up with the perfect way to spend it, but we've got a lot to do so there isn't any time to waste!" She declared, beginning to once again drag him off somewhere.

"What are we going to do?" Spencer asked blankly.

"We're going to experience the childhood we never had!"

Spencer blinked, still utterly baffled. "...Right, okay. And how are we going to do that?"

She replied matter-of-factly, like he should already know the answer. "Well clearly we can't rely on our own life experiences to go about this properly, so we've got to do a bit of research first."

"Which means..." Spencer prompted.

"We're going to the library!"

* * *

"For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons;

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

 _-T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_

* * *

 **Author's note: I've been sitting on this little chapter for a few weeks, believing it to be unfinished but unable to add anything to it. And eventually I had to stop pretending that being an author means you control the story, when we all know the story controls itself and I am just the vessel. So I have accepted this chapter as finished, and now I can move on to the next one. It will be a fun one, I promise.**

 **As always, follow/favorite/review!**


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's note: This is a very long chapter, to make up for the very long wait.**

 **P.S. Warning: cavity-inducing levels of fluff.**

* * *

" _It's never too late to have a happy childhood." -Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker_

* * *

Spencer squinted at the sudden sunlight as they emerged from the library after a few hours of intense research and data compilations, armed with a to-do list freshly written in Hermione's neat penmanship, which he mentally went over again as they headed down the steps.

Hermione was reading it over herself, absently humming a tune that he didn't recognize. " _Weasley is our king…"_ She sang in a soft breath, which tapered back off into humming which then turned into a hum of thoughtful concentration. "Hmm." She said, frowning at their list. "I'm not sure about some of these things."

"Like what?" Spencer asked, peering over her shoulder.

"This one." She pointed.

Spencer laughed. "I _knew_ you would chicken out about this. You're a librarian and a former government worker. You guys are hardly known for rule breaking."

She gasped, offended, and spun around to face him with one finger pointed sternly at his chest. "Excuse me? I'll thank you kindly to remember that this whole adventure was _my_ idea to begin with, doctor. Pardon me for wanting to go about this in a way that means we don't get killed, or worse, _fired."_

"Hermione, that's not going to happen." He reassured her, trying his hardest to sound sincere and not at all amused by her order of priorities. "These are hardly death-defying acts. The worst that will happen is some sleep deprivation, a little overspending - but not too much if we're thrifty about this - and some damn good memories." He finished with what he hoped was a charmingly persuasive smile, channeling his inner Morgan.

 _Inner Morgan? Now that's something you definitely don't want to analyze further._

He mentally shuddered and then switched over to some verbal reverse psychology. He casually shrugged and said airily, "But, hey, Hermione, if you want to back out on some or all of these, that's totally fine. No one would blame you, least of all me, if you just wanted to spend a quiet normal day at home or take a calm simple stroll in the park. Those sound nice too. Besides, I never care what we do as long as I get to spend time with you." He finished with another smile.

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing, Spencer Reid. You're not the first boy that's tried to accuse me of not being fun to get me to be more fun."

It took him a second to follow her thought, but at the end he smiled sheepishly. "Well, is it working?"

Her glare intensified, and she muttered under her breath something like 'a plague on every tall boy with messy hair and pretty eyes', which Spencer's newly discovered boyfriend side suspiciously filed away to address later but he currently took to mean that he won this round.

"I'll have you know I can have just as much fun as the next person." Hermione informed him primly. "But it would be much easier for me to have fun if I wasn't constantly worrying about my companions dying or destroying the world while we do it."

"What kind of fun did you have as a kid?" Spencer wondered.

"Oh, you know, the usual." Hermione said with a shrug that was too perfectly timed to be casual. "Fighting monsters and ghosts in the bathroom and trying to stop evil villains from taking over the world, and our school." She glanced away as she said this, but her voice was light and playful.

Spencer blinked, then grinned. "...Wow, I wish I had been your friend when I was a kid. I could have used a friend with such an insane imagination."

Hermione let out a short laugh. Spencer wasn't quite sure he got the joke.

"Okay then, I propose adding a condition to our list." He said. Hermione's face was neutral as she waited for him to explain. Spencer took a quick deep breath and said, "If we're going to do this over the next two days, we need to be fully committed. It's all or nothing." He said seriously.

"All or nothing?" Hermione repeated dubiously.

"Yep." He nodded firmly. "We're not allowed to back out of anything." Hermione looked reluctant, so he challenged, "Unless you want to chicken out after all…?"

"Hmm." Hermione glanced back down at the list warily, then looked back up at him with fire in her eyes. "Alright, deal." She laughed a little. "I mean, I did make backup lists that have the first list organized in alphabetical order, in order of money required, how much time needed to do each thing, and then in order of general plausibility. Might as well put those lists to good use."

Spencer just looked at her silently.

She flushed slightly. "...I may also have already researched where the closest supermarkets and hardware stores are so we can stop there on our way back to your flat to pick up supplies." She admitted.

Spencer chuckled. "You're such a nerd." She just gave him a look that clearly meant _look who's talking,_ so he quickly leaned down to lightly kiss her cheek and assured her, "It's cute."

She tossed her hair, more to get it out of her face than to be sassy. "Damn right it's cute." Then she squared her shoulders and stuck out her hand. "Let's make this official. Do you solemnly swear to adhere to the aforementioned condition to the document, or face a consequence to be decided at a later date?"

Spencer took her hand. "I do." Then, realizing how he had worded that and to whom, hastily corrected, "I mean, I do solemnly swear."

Hermione's face seemed to be slightly pink, but her voice was steady as she said, "I too solemnly swear."

She moved to let go, but Spencer held on a moment just long enough to look into her eyes and reiterate: "No backing out."

"No backing out." Hermione repeated strongly. "All or nothing."

"All or nothing." Spencer nodded quickly, before mentally rescanning the list and amending, "Well, maybe not _all._ I mean, _this_ one probably _is_ a bad idea, and some of these things are scientifically impossible to do over the next two days." He remarked.

Hermione smirked. " _Scientifically_ impossible, perhaps." She retorted cryptically. "Who knows what other resources we might have at our disposal?"

She turned around and skipped down the rest of library steps, once again humming that strange song.

He snorted. "Resources beyond science? What, like magic?"

Hermione didn't turn around to face him, but Spencer got the impression she was smiling.

* * *

"Hermione, I can't do this!" Spencer hissed.

"Yes you bloody well can!" Hermione hissed back. "It was your idea to add this to the list anyway!"

"Yeah, but I thought we both agreed this was a bad idea! This was the one that made you want to back out of the list entirely!" Spencer said, trying not to panic at the stubborn look on her face. He had been in negotiations before and had seen that look on the face of zealots ready to die for their cause.

" _You_ said all or nothing!" Hermione said fiercely.

"Okay, okay, Hermione, I was only teasing you earlier about not being fun. Believe me, you are plenty fun. You don't have to do this to prove it."

"Me?" She snorted. "Oh, no, doctor, this is going to be all you. I'm beginning to doubt your commitment to The List. This is a loyalty test, and so far you're failing!" She said, eyebrows raised high in a challenge.

"Hermione!" Spencer whispered desperately. "I am a _federal agent_!"

"Cheers, then you know some people who can get you out of jail if the job goes south!" Hermione whispered back eagerly, a glint in her eyes.

"Calm down, Irene Adler." He retorted, trying to bat her hands away from where she was trying to surreptitiously stick a candy bar in his pocket. "We're not going to _steal_ something."

"Stop being such a goody-goody, _Sherlock_." She teased. "I thought the point of this day was to recreate some authentic adolescent experiences? C'mon, you're a behaviorist. Isn't it common for people to experiment with shoplifting in their youth?"

"Did _you?"_ He shot back, thinking he had caught her.

Her lips twitched. "I'll admit that I've never stolen a sweet from a shop, but I could be quite the rule breaker back in my day… although perhaps that could be more attributed to my life circumstances and my friends' influences rather than any latent desire for anarchy in myself."

"Really. _You_ were a rule breaker?" Spencer asked skeptically.

"How are you surprised by this? I'm currently trying to convince you to steal a candy bar!" She laughed quietly.

"Yes, you're clearly a professional thief because this is obviously going _so well_." He rolled his eyes, whispers dripping with sarcasm.

"I'll have you know I once stole a _dragon_ from a _bank!"_ Hermione said hotly, hands planted rather adorably on her hips.

Spencer stared blankly at her. "A _dragon?"_

Hermione froze, then smiled too widely. "Don't you remember? I was a very imaginative child. I stole many dragons from many banks, Spencer. It was just a regular Tuesday afternoon for me; stealing a dragon… from a bank..." she laughed awkwardly.

Spencer shook his head, "I think that's the result of Tolkien's imagination, Hermione." He laughed. "Okay, Bilbo. Put back the candy bar, it's time to go back to the Shire."

She glared mulishly at him, but Spencer wasn't swayed… until she switched gears and started to pout. Spencer tried really very hard not to be swayed by her big brown eyes and trembling lips. Honestly, he did.

"...okay, fine, put in my pocket _quickly."_

Her face lit up.

"But!" Spencer quickly added, "I get to pick what we do next."

She smiled smugly and promised. Then with entirely too much mischievous glee she managed to wrestle the candy into his cardigan pocket with lots of unsubtle snickers as Spencer impatiently stood there, anxiously keeping watch for employees or police officers coming to arrest them, and pitying the parents that had to raise a young Hermione who was probably smarter than them with the adorable face of a freckled, curly haired baby angel and the stubbornness of a seasoned federal prosecutor.

"Now let's go get the rest of the stuff and _get out of here."_ Spencer said when she managed to finally hide the candy in his sweater, grabbing Hermione's hand and dragging her down the aisle, trying and failing not to smile at the adorably excited expression on her normally serious face.

A little while later, they were walking through the parking lot laden down with bags of supplies for their planned adventures when Spencer slightly tripped over a cracked piece of pavement and as he staggered to catch his balance, something fell out of his pocket with an unceremonious plop.

Hermione and Spencer stared quietly down at the forgotten stolen candy bar, its plastic wrapper shining brightly in the sunlight.

Spencer glanced up at his girlfriend, who was squinting down at the candy bar with a conflicted look on her face. "We should go back and pay for it, shouldn't we?"

Hermione frowned, chewing on her lip, then sighed.

"Yeah. Let's go."

* * *

"I don't know about this, Spencer." Hermione said with just a hint of panic in her voice, frozen stiff in her perch on the bicycle which still managed to wobble back and forth underneath her. "It seems unwise."

"Hey, no backing out!" He reminded her, readjusting his grip to help balance her. "This one is a requirement! Literally every child in the world should know how to ride a bike. Besides, you promised I could pick the next activity. This is my choice."

She frowned fiercely at him. "I _know_ how to ride a bike, Spencer Reid. Why are we even doing this?"

"Do you _really_ know how to ride a bike?" He retorted. "Because I think that if you did, you definitely wouldn't walk everywhere, especially in nice weather. You're the type of environmentally conscious, but impatiently efficient person that would bike _everywhere_ if you knew how."

Hermione looked away, but her scowl turned petulant and he knew he was right. "My parents taught me how to ride a bicycle when I was quite young, but they drove me to school every day and then when I went to boarding school, cycling became sort of… obsolete. Then when I graduated and went out into the world, other means of transportation were more convenient and I just never got around to buying a bike and… here we are." She sighed heavily. "So yes, I do know how to ride a bike, I've just… sort of… forgotten."

"All the more reason to do this!" Spencer insisted. "If you learned once, muscle memory should kick back in and it will be smooth sailing from there. Besides, I'll be right with you every step - er, pedal of the way." He said earnestly.

Her face was conflicted, her gaze trailing back to the bike beneath her.

"We could go biking together…" He cajoled.

Hermione huffed. "Alright, f _ine_. But don't you dare let go, Spencer Reid!"

He placed his hand over his heart. "I swear on the Declaration of Independence."

"That doesn't mean anything to _me_ , you prat! I'm not American!"

He grinned unapologetically. "Oh, I see Britain is still sore about that little document, huh?"

She glared dangerously at him. "Spencer…" In his name was a hundred unpleasant promises.

"Okay, okay, I swear on… on libraries everywhere." He swiftly corrected himself.

Her features smoothed at the gravity of his vow. "That's sacred ground you tread on, Dr. Reid," She straightened her back bravely and lifted her chin regally. "You may proceed, but do so carefully." She warned.

Behind her back, Reid rolled his eyes fondly and smirked in excitement. "Okay, get ready…" He said, bending his lanky body down to steady her. "Here we go!"

His shoes scuffed the pavement as he began to pick up pace and there was a loud metal ticking as the gears turned. Her knuckles whitened on the handlebars

"Spencer!" Hermione yelped, "Why are you going so bloody _fast_? Slow down!"

"Relax, Hermione!" He laughed. "You're doing great!"

"I am doing _terrified!"_ She snapped back.

"That sentence doesn't even make sense."

"I don't _care_!"

"Hermione, you need to pedal."

" _I know that!"_

"Okay, okay, just relax. You're doing great!" He said again. "You're practically a pro!"

"Don't patronize me." She griped, but sounded less panicked. Until… "Wait! Why is your voice so far away?" She glanced back over her shoulder and seeing him standing a few meters behind her, hands in his pockets, grinning at her, she shrieked, " _Spencer you swore on libraries everywhere!"_

What followed was a stream of increasingly creative and unflattering curses. Spencer's eyebrows rose. "Are you cussing me out in _Bulgarian_?" He asked incredulously.

In her anger, Hermione managed to maneuver the bike in an inelegant u-turn to make her way back to her chuckling boyfriend, who took hold of the handlebars once she reached him, smiling innocently at her truly ferocious glare.

"Spencer Reid -" She began hotly. He swiftly leaned down and lightly kissed her nose. "Oh, don't you dare think that you're getting out of a good throttling just by being cute, doctor!"

"I would never presume." He responded seriously, but couldn't hide the twinkle in his eyes. "You know why I let go, right?" He asked, bending over to look her right in the eyes.

She huffed, blowing an errant curl out of her eyes. Despite her protestations, her expression had softened greatly. "Besides an appallingly sacrilegious attitude towards the sanctity of libraries?"

Spencer ignored that. "Mya, you never needed me to hold on. You totally rode the bike all on your own. You didn't even fall over!" He encouraged her, the nickname sliding easily from his lips as if he had always called her that.

Her eyes had widened. "What did you just call me?"

He blinked, quickly rewinding his words, then felt his face heat up slightly. "Oh - er - sorry, it just came out… I love your name, but it's sort of long and I - I meant it as an endearment, but if you don't want me to call you that, I totally understand and this time I swear for real that I will never ever -"

This time, Hermione cut _him_ off with a kiss. "Oh, Spencer; you wonderful, thoughtful man. You know that I would be the first one to tell you if I was unhappy with anything you did. I'm not exactly non confrontational." She confessed with a sheepish smile.

"True." Spencer nodded sagely.

"It's just, no one has called me that since my parents…" She cleared her throat. "My mum and dad called me Mya all throughout my childhood; they were the only ones who ever did actually. My friends at school called me Mione, or often just Hermione."

"Mione." Spencer tested the name out. "I like it," He decided. "But I gotta say, I kind of like Mya better… but if that was just special for your parents…"

Hermione was quiet for a long moment, her face thoughtful but not hostile. Then she calmly got off the bike and set up the kickstand. She took Spencer's hands in hers and looked up into his face. When she spoke, her voice was gentle and soft, as if she was letting the breeze carry the words out of her mouth for her. "I love my parents dearly and deeply," She began, "and my childhood memories are precious to me. But, I've had a hard life, a life that my parents never understood and... I don't know if they'll ever truly understand the person I've become. To them, I haven't been their little Mya in a very long time."

Spencer hated how distant and sad her eyes had become. He would give anything to take back what he had said now.

"But…" She glanced back up at him, a nervous hope blooming in her eyes, chasing out the ghosts. "I'm still that little girl, deep inside my heart. No matter what I've gone through, where I come from is still so important to me. I think I'd love to be called Mya again, by someone who knows who I am now."

Spencer laced their fingers together, "And I would love to know you, Hermione-Mya-Mione Granger." He grinned, then cleared his throat and glanced away, because if she kept looking at him like that he was going to kiss her and they would never finish their to-do list.

Then she stood on her tiptoes and he was overwhelmed by the fragrance of her shampoo and he decided, what the hell, they had plenty of time.

* * *

After a few long, beautifully breathless minutes, Spencer remarked, "You know, since we're already in the park, we might as well knock a few more things off our list…"

Hermione was immediately suspicious of the playful grin on Spencer's face. "Like what…?" She warily prompted, then immediately leapt backward as Spencer lunged for her. Fast as she was, he had caught her slightly unawares and his long arms caught her with a light contact of his palm against her arm.

He lingered there for just the space of a heartbeat; long enough for his face to split into a wide toothy grin as he crowed, "You're it!" Then he spun around and took off as fast as his long legs could take him.

It took her a moment to catch on, staring after his retreating form blinking in shock, before her competitive nature took over and she grinned with all the ferocity of a lioness on the hunt.

Spencer glanced over his shoulder just long enough to see her hair flying about wildly as she gave chase, which also happened to be just enough time for his mind to be completely distracted by her and forget where he was going, and he ran full speed into a tree.

Next thing he knew, he was staring up at the blue sky trying to figure out where his lungs were when his vision was full of Hermione's lovely face tight with concern. "Spencer! Are you okay?"

"Fine." He wheezed. "Produce oxygen, intercept airborne particulates, reduce smog."

Her concern intensified. "Did you hit your head? You're babbling."

"I hit my whole body, actually." He corrected. "I'm not babbling. I'm trying to remind myself that trees are non-sentient, immobile plant life-forms necessary for the overall environmental health of urban communities and that they're not malicious bullies actively trying to kill me."

Hermione's face relaxed into a smirk and her voice was full of mirth when she spoke. "Oh. Of course."

Spencer tested his fine motor skills by wiggling his arms and legs, then groaned as he began to sit up. "Sequester carbon dioxide, reduce overall concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases, promote beneficial water quality." He muttered.

Hermione couldn't hide her laughter now. "Oh, I don't know, I think 'tries to kill Spencer Reid' can be added to the list of positives when the man in question unfairly ambushes his girlfriend with a game of tag." She said. "Speaking of…" She leaned in close, and grinned wickedly before lightly tapping the top of his head. "You're it."

* * *

"Why do I have to count out loud, exactly?" Hermione called out, frowning at the bark of the tree inches away from her face (not the same tree that had become so intimately familiar with Spencer earlier, at his insistence).

"For authenticity." Spencer replied as he backed away from her. "Remember: no backing out, Miss Granger." She turned around to give him a flat glare. "Hey! And no peeking!" He said, freezing in place.

"Alright, alright." She sighed sharply, obediently facing the tree again and muttering under her breath, "I feel foolish."

"You need to cover your eyes!" Spencer instructed, and he could practically _feel_ her rolling her eyes but grinned as she put her hands over her eyes and leaned against the tree trunk. He heard her grumbling and deduced what she was saying would be inappropriate for polite company. "I can't hear you counting!" He called out, being purposefully obnoxious.

She tapped her foot in endearing irritability, and ground out _just_ loud enough for him to make out, " _Unus… duo… tres… quattuor… quinque…"_

Spencer smiled as he walked away, looking for a place to hide his lanky six-foot-one frame.

She _would_ be counting in Latin.

* * *

"No." Spencer said stubbornly, glaring at the tree that had clotheslined him earlier.

"Oh stop being such a baby, Spencer Reid." Hermione said. "You wanted to climb a tree, and this is the best climbing tree we could find!"

"There are lots of trees in the world." He retorted. "Approximately three trillion. That's roughly four hundred trees to a person. That means I have three hundred and ninety nine other trees to choose from - if this tree is one of my four hundred, which I'm pretty damn sure it is _not._ " He finished emphatically.

"Yes, and almost half of all the trees in the world live in tropical or subtropical forests." Hermione replied. "Of which this park is neither." Her expression changed from mild exasperation to amusement. "Besides, it's not the _tree's_ fault you ran into it like a pitch from a professional cricket bowler." She countered. "And besides, I rather think this tree is one of _my_ four hundred, despite how utterly ridiculous that notion is."

"Ridiculous?" Spencer said, affronted.

"Trees shouldn't belong to anyone." Hermione said with a passion he hadn't expected. "Imagine how fantastically lovely the earth would be if we applied half as much resources into environmental conservation and rehabilitation as we did into urban progression and commercial expansion!" She argued as she dragged him closer to the tree by his arm, before turning around and with businesslike precision linked his fingers together and pulled his hands down near his knees, talking all the while.

"Hey, I am _all_ for saving the environment." Spencer protested as Hermione placed her hands firmly on his shoulders and placed one small foot in his entwined hands. "I'm a chemist, Mya," He grunted as she pushed down on her shoulders to propel herself upward, quickly grabbing the lowest tree branch that looked appropriately sturdy. "I know exactly what too much carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons can do to the atmosphere." He said, holding onto her ankles until she had found a safe perch in the tree.

"But," He added, circling the trunk until he found a slightly lower branch he could climb up on without assistance (probably). "Regardless, I'm pretty sure all trees _do_ belong to someone, and I'm not talking about my definitely- _not-_ ridiculous statistic. I'm talking about the acquisition of property; private, state, and national."

"I know what you mean, Spencer," Hermione said, her voice hardly reflecting her physical exertion as she carefully maneuvered herself higher up in the tree. She was having an easier go of it than Spencer, being considerably smaller and lighter than he was. "And I said that trees _shouldn't_ belong to anyone, not that they _didn't._ "

"Why, Miss Granger," Spencer remarked with a grin. "I had no idea you were such an activist."

"Oh, my good doctor," She said primly, with a contrary wicked sliver of a smile. "You have _no_ idea."

Spencer watched her climb for a moment as he struggled to unsnag his sweater from a broken piece of bark. "This isn't fair." He complained. She paused to look back down at him quizzically. He explained with what he hoped was a flirtatious (but most likely just goofy) smile, "No one should be so attractive debating conservationism while climbing a tree." She promptly turned pink, and pleased with the success of his compliment, he switched back to their discussion. "Besides, I don't think trees can take care of themselves, so land ownership is arguably a good thing. It encourages environmental responsibility and accountability." He finally untangled his sweater without unraveling it and impulsively stripped it off and left it hanging on the branch to retrieve on their way down. He also rolled up his sleeves to minimize further wardrobe malfunctions on their deciduous expedition.

"I rather think they were taking care of themselves just fine for the billions of years before humans started slashing and burning…" Her voice trailed off as she glanced down to watch him, a strange look crossing her face. Her lips curved up appreciatively. "Believe me, doctor, the attraction is quite mutual."

He nearly fell out of the tree.

* * *

The world turned into a jarring blur of start-stop blue, green, gray, and brown and Spencer began to deeply question his current life choices and mental stability as his three-decades-old body began to loudly protest its treatment as it was jostled and rolled into contortions it found entirely unagreeable.

"Her - mi - o - ne -" The syllables of her name were punched out of him with each awkward rotation of his body against the ground. "Why - are - we - do - ing -" With an abrupt jolt his momentum came to a halt against a flat but unpleasant rock while the world continued to spin in his vision until his brain caught up with his body. "- this?"

He sat up too quickly to avoid the rock digging into his spine and turned to find his companion while blinking away the vertigo. Hermione was still rolling down the small hill they had found, seemingly in a slightly more effective and enjoyable way than he had, given her surprised and breathless spurts of laughter as she descended.

She came to a gentler stop than he did at the proper bottom of the hill and lay on her back, smiling dizzyingly at the sky. "I don't think my back will thank me for that tomorrow." She remarked. "I've spent far too many years bent over books and parchment to escape rolling down a hill unscathed."

Spencer carefully clambered down to lay beside her, his arm opening to let her nestle against his side in such a natural gesture he didn't even think of how easy such things came to him with her when it took him literally decades to be able to even have normal conversation with other human beings, let alone ones he was actually romantically interested in. "Yeah… I think now that we can safely cross 'roll down a hill' off our retroactive childhood memories bucket list, we should probably never do it again."

Hermione laughed a little, leaning her head against his shoulder and resting one arm across his abdomen. He was intimately aware of her every shift and movement against him and his throat constricted in anxiety, because how could she be real? How could she be here? He had seen and done such violence… how could he deserve something as beautiful and bright as she?

He held her slightly closer to him, as if she would fade and float away like her laughter on the breeze.

...But then the moment passed and she stayed solid and warm and soft against him, and whatever fears had knotted up inside him loosened up and a liquid warm spread through him soft and steadying as sunlight. He was able to relax and simply enjoy the wonder of being in her presence without fearing her absence, and their lungs breathed and their hearts beat together in a sweet sort of silence until her voice said in a normal octave that unstopped time and brought them gently and happily back to their reality;

"Now what?"

Spencer hmm-ed, mentally going over their bucket list as he had dubbed it, and came across the perfect idea with a grin. "Now," He said, "We're going to look at the clouds."

"Oh," She said in the usual matter-of-fact way her practical and logical nature confronted all things fanciful and frivolous. Then she smiled. "Okay."

They didn't get around to looking for shapes and animals in the formless aerial puffs of cumulonimbus for a few good minutes, entirely too enthralled with looking at each other.

Spencer found many wonderful, impossible things in the skies of her eyes, and it was entirely the opposite of fanciful and frivolous.

In fact, he didn't think he would ever be able to discover a better use of his time.

He didn't think he would ever want to.

* * *

Spencer frowned uncertainly, tilting his head. "Is it supposed to look like that?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "It's a fort made of blankets and pillows, Spencer, it's not supposed to look like anything."

Spencer shrugged. "Okay, but shouldn't it at least be structurally sound before we try to get inside?"

"Blankets and _pillows_ , Spencer, not wood and metal."

"Okay, but -"

"Oh, just be quiet and get in the bloody fort already, you ridiculously tall architectural critic!" Hermione said, unceremoniously pushing her boyfriend into the extremely precarious assemblage of bedding which promptly collapsed on top of him with an anticlimactic muffled _fwump_.

"Hmm." Hermione studied the struggling tangled heap of limbs and blankets at her feet. "You may have had a point about the structure."

A muffled sound came from somewhere within the pile that could've been a sarcastic _ya think?_

She tried not to giggle and failed spectacularly. "Hold on, you big oaf, you're going to strangle yourself. Just hold still and let me help you." The writhing mass obligingly stilled and Hermione poked and prodded at it with practiced efficiency until she said, "Aha!" And seized one seemingly random corner of a quilt and tugged sharply.

Instead of neatly unraveling the mess like she had expected, however, the quilt she had pulled was firmly stuck under Spencer's six-foot-one frame and with a startled yelp she toppled over, hopelessly entangling herself in the pile as well.

After a few supremely awkward and hilarious moments of wriggling around trying to get free, Hermione and Spencer found themselves face to face.

"Hi," Spencer said dryly.

Hermione smiled sheepishly, eyes sparkling. "Hi."

"You know, if this is how all fort building ends up, consider me a convert." He joked, using their position to wrap his long arms around her and draw her closer. Hermione shook her head at his awkward flirtations but smiled anyway.

"You do realize we're going to have to get up and build it again, right?" She said, but laid her head against his chest. "...Well, perhaps not quite yet."

* * *

"This doesn't seem safe, Mya." Spencer pointed out even as he dutifully helped her put out supplies. "It seems kind of hazardous. And messy. Which are two words I don't think should be used together in any situation, particularly one taking place inside my apartment."

"Stop being such a worrywart, Spencer." Hermione said with a fond laugh. "Besides, we're doing this in the safest way possible, because _someone_ didn't want us building a _real_ campfire."

"Yeah, I can't imagine why." Spencer said drily. "It couldn't have anything to do with my floors being made of flammable materials and not wanting to die a fiery death, could it?"

"No, I think it has more to do with him being a spoilsport." Hermione grinned back.

"You know, you've been calling me a lot of names today, Miss Granger." He remarked. "Is this part of getting reacquainted with childhood practices?"

"Not quite," She laughed. "It's just fun."

Spencer smirked.

"Alright!" Hermione clapped her hands together decisively before gathering up her mass of hair and twisting it up out of the way on top of her head. "First things first," She chirped, reaching out and with one quick twist of her wrist one of the burners on the stove flared to life with the hiss-and-spit of gas igniting, first bright orange before settling into a calm blue flame.

Hermione turned to him. "Alright, take it away, Yankee, this is after all your area of American expertise." She teased, sweeping her hand towards the efficiently dancing flames in a grand gesture of deference.

He straightened his shoulders and took to his task with the seriousness it deserved. He stuck one hand out, palm up. "Miss Granger. Marshmallow." He ordered solemnly. Hermione nodded once and carefully placed the squishy sweet in his hand, which he then promptly popped into his mouth with a childish grin.

Hermione's delicate brows lifted skeptically, a smile playing on his lips. "I don't quite think that was the point of this exercise."

Spencer shrugged as he chewed, eyes bright. "I couldn't resist." He mumbled around his mouthful of marshmallow. "You always gotta have at least one plain." Hermione shook her head doubtfully but her eyes twinkled. Spencer finished eating the marshmallow and returned to the task at hand."Okay, give me another one. For real this time." She regarded him suspiciously but dutifully dispensed another marshmallow.

"Fork."

She handed over the long thin metal picnic fork, another one of their purchases from the store, as neither of them had ever had need for such things in their adult lives so far. Spencer carefully skewered the marshmallow with the tines and adjusted it minutely until he was ready. "You don't want it to be too close to the end of the fork, or it will fall off when the insides of the marshmallow melt in the fire." He explained her perfectionism.

Hermione nodded, watching his every move closely with studied anticipation.

"Okay, here we go. Three… two… one… roast!" Spencer plunged his marshmallow straight into the flames, and it immediately caught fire and was turned to ash within seconds.

Hermione gave him a dry look. "Did you mean to do that?" She asked, in such a tone as to convey she already knew the answer.

"No." Spencer sighed, turning off the burner and using his picnic fork to pick the charred remains of his marshmallow off of the stovetop. "I guess it has been about twenty years since I last did this; I'm hardly an expert. My mom never really let me have much sugar, I only did this the one time my dad tried to take me camping." He cleared his throat, banishing the memory, and said louder and in a bit of a defensive tone, "Besides, I think it goes without saying that campfires are a lot different than stove burners and so you can't roast a marshmallow in the same way."

"Of course," Hermione agreed seriously, obviously trying not to smile. "Well, given that I was raised in Britain and therefore did not eat melted sugary garbage such as this -" she rolled her eyes at his offended look, " - I'm obviously not an expert either. So I suppose we shall both have to approach the this learning curve at the same speed." She said bravely, spearing a marshmallow with her own fork and popping another into her mouth with only the slightest hesitation.

Her mouth twisted slightly. "Very… sweet." She remarked. Spencer huffed a laugh. She peered into the bag, picking up the package of chocolate bars and examining the nutritional facts printed on the side. She made a face when she read the sugar content. "I don't suppose we have a more bitter kind of chocolate to balance out the marshmallow?" She asked hopefully. "Or another type of biscuit to use besides graham crackers?"

"S'mores aren't supposed to be _gourmet_ , Mya," Spencer pointed out. "They're supposed to be… well, melted sugary garbage."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at the innocent bag of powdery white marshmallows for a moment, before sighing and shrugging, "Well… alright. For the sake of authenticity." She said, picking up another uncooked marshmallow. "Cheers". She said bravely, and popped it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, valiantly trying and failing not to make a face. "I suppose... it's not all bad." She offered.

"They taste better once you roast them." Spencer promised. "You should try one plain like that, then we'll put it all together in a s'more and then you'll totally get it."

Hermione seemed doubtful of this outcome, but devoted herself admirably to her s'more making education. Spencer was partial to the blackened marshmallows with impossibly gooey insides, while Hermione soon discovered she liked hers golden brown on all sides, not too burnt and not too soft. Spencer didn't know how she had the patience for it, when all it took was a few seconds in the fire for a perfectly good and burnt marshmallow.

After consuming an ungodly amount of s'mores (they even managed to scrounge up a bag of salted caramel chocolate Emily had given him long ago to create some 'gourmet' s'mores that Hermione much preferred to the original recipe. Hermione called them _s'mourmet,_ and was incredibly amused by her own cleverness. Spencer just called them an abomination), Hermione found herself standing in the middle of Spencer's messy kitchen, holding a rag and staring with wide eyes as her suddenly extremely hyperactive boyfriend zipped around the kitchen, talking a mile a minute about what sounded like how to prove string theory using the molecular structure of a marshmallow.

"So that's why his mother didn't let him have sugar." She said to herself. "...She's definitely smarter than I am."

* * *

"We have to stay up all night?" Spencer asked from where he was sprawled in their newly reconstructed fort, watching as Hermione unloaded their supplies for the night. "Aren't we a little old for that?"

"I'm going to ignore the 'old' comment, mister." Hermione said airily, "And don't act like our careers don't call for a ridiculous amount of overnight shifts."

"Yeah, exactly, which is why I try to sleep as much as I can on my nights off." He pointed out.

"All or nothing," She said in a sing-song voice. "And may I remind you that staying up all night was _your_ idea."

"Are we going to have this argument before each item on the list?" Spencer muttered under his breath. Louder, he replied, "I know it was my idea, but I kind of thought we would be staying up all night doing something _else."_

She whipped around with such a look of shock on her face Spencer realized with the force of having a bowling ball chucked at your face exactly what he had said. "No no no no no!" He stammered, flailing his arms around wildly as a physical manifestation of his denial. "That is _not_ what I meant. I mean, er, I do like you _so_ much and you're like _insanely_ beautiful so uh sure, maybe _someday,_ but we barely know each other and I just want you to know that I definitely did _not_ have an ulterior motive for inviting you over -"

"Spencer - "

"- I mean look at me! I'm so awkward and I have no idea what I'm doing, I've never been someone's boyfriend before and I'm almost thirty years old, and I still haven't gotten over the fact you ever _looked_ at me, let alone _kissed_ me, or actually agreed to be my _girlfriend_ -"

" _Spencer_." His stream of words that he just couldn't stop was abruptly cut off by Hermione covering his mouth gently but firmly with her hand. Her face was serious but her eyes were twinkling. "Calm down." She said soothingly. "I'll admit I was a bit shocked when you said that, but if you had just given me a _moment_ I would have immediately realized that's not what you meant, _without_ all the nearly incoherent rambling." She laughed as his ears reddened, then said more earnestly, "Spencer Reid. You have been nothing but kind and thoughtful and respectful of me. That is the man I agreed to have a relationship with, and that is the man that I want to get to know better." She vowed, then smiled, "And that's all we need to think about for now. Let's just enjoy where we're at, and you don't need to worry about me thinking you have ill intentions. If I suspected you did, I would talk to you about it." Her smile took on a sharp edge. "Or I would just kill you."

Spencer swallowed hard. "Uh... ha ha ha…" He laughed nervously. "...Yeah…"

She grinned at him. "Oh my, I do scare you a bit, don't I? Ron and Harry will be pleased to know that. When it comes to physical harm, I _should_ be the one you're frightened of, but my best friends are no jest either. They may be halfway across the world but they are rather protective of me."

"Duly noted." Spencer said with another nervous laugh. "So… can we pretend the last few minutes didn't happen and go back to our previous conversation?"

Hermione rolled her eyes but laughingly agreed. "Yes, I do believe you were about to come around to my way of thinking."

"I kind of thought we would just read or do a crossword puzzle or something." Spencer suggested. "Then, you know, fall asleep and pretend we didn't mean to even though we both knew we were totally going to fall asleep. Kids do that at sleepovers, right?"

"Actually, I think my version is more accurate." Hermione said. "Having a film marathon and relentlessly policing each other to stay awake all night long, under threat of humiliating pranks involving permanent markers and bowls of warm water." Spencer gave her a weird look. "Don't worry, we won't do the pranks." Hermione reassured, patting his arm. "But I rather think we should commit to trying to stay up all night. It could be fun! Besides, we only have about thirty more hours before you have to go back to work, and who knows when we'll be able to do this again?" She added.

"You mean when we'll have another chance to marathon Disney movies and binge on junk food?" Spencer corrected her, taking visual stock of the pile of stuff she had plopped next to him in the fort.

"No, I mean, who knows when you'll get another chance to spend some quality time cuddling with your _girlfriend_ , especially if you keep being so bloody difficult about this." She shot back.

The genius didn't have to think too hard about that. "...which movie do you want to watch first?"

* * *

Spencer was abruptly awakened by something dense and soft smacking him hard in the face. "Huh? What?"

"You fell asleep!" Hermione accused, scowling at him and brandishing a couch cushion as her weapon.

"No I didn't!" An extremely disoriented Spencer protested, trying to gather his bearings. It was dark outside, and there were colorful animated cats playing instruments paused on the TV screen. "Um, what time is it?" Hermione hit him with the cushion again. "Hey! Quit it!"

"We're supposed to be staying up all night, Spencer Reid!" She said sharply, punctuating her words with more smacks from the pillow. "Don't you fall asleep on me!"

"Well I'm not asleep now - _oof_. HEY! Hermione, if you don't stop hitting me with that pillow -" He warned.

"What?" She challenged, fire in her eyes. "What are you going to do, Mister Badass FBI Agent?" Her accent made it sound like she said _bard-arse,_ which was pretty funny but Spencer didn't think laughing at her would do him any favors right then. Then she continued, "With your _eidetic memory_ and doctoral degree in _mathematics_? Ooh, I'm getting the jitters." She taunted.

"Okay, that's it." He said, fully awake now. "It is _on."_ With surprisingly reflexes, he snatched a pillow from behind his back and started attacking his girlfriend with it, who yelped and took off like a petite brunette rocket.

Spencer grabbed all the cushions his long arms could hold and chased her, tossing pillows at her with an accuracy that would have made his firearms instructor at the FBI proud. She ducked into the kitchen and, since she only had the one pillow, began throwing whatever safe objects she could grab: leftover marshmallows, a paper towel roll, a sponge, and finally a lone banana that had been minding its business on his kitchen counter.

"Whoa!" Spencer dodged the flying fruit. "Okay, that could have seriously hurt me!"

The battle paused just long enough for Hermione to give him a flat stare.

"...Nevermind." Spencer muttered, then yelped and held up a cushion to protect himself from the grapes she began lobbing at him like tiny reddish-purple grenades.

"I surrender! I surrender!" Spencer finally cried, waving a white paper towel over his head after he ran out of pillows. The grapes stopped flying, but Hermione was silent and didn't come out of the kitchen.

"Mya?" Spencer called out cautiously, creeping closer to the doorway before the silence began to concern him and he quickly stepped into the kitchen.

"Ha!" Hermione crowed triumphantly and pressed the trigger on the kitchen sink faucet sprayer she was aiming at him, dousing him with a surprisingly forceful spray of cold water.

Spencer let out a somewhat unmanly shout and tried to twist out of the way of the water, but Hermione only laughed evilly and followed him with the hose, calling out, "No mercy! All's fair in war! The British are coming!" She attempted a threatening step forward, but the hose attached to the sink pulled her up short and she was yanked off balance and lost her grip on the sprayer.

She laughed nervously up at her soaked, scowling boyfriend and held up her hands placatingly. "Um, I surrender?"

Spencer grinned. "No mercy!" And tackled her in a cold, wet hug. Hermione squealed and struggled, but Spencer held her captive with one long arm and used the other to grab the hose and turn the sprayer on her.

Hermione screamed and wriggled her way around to use Spencer as a human shield with him also twisting to try and keep up with her. Soon they were a hopelessly wet and tangled mess, the hose stretched beyond capacity and the water slowed to a weak trickle.

Spencer and Hermione blinked at each other before they fell apart laughing, in hysterical fits that trailed off before one of them started back off, setting the other off. It was a hopeless cycle that left them sitting on the kitchen floor, propped up against each other as they struggled to catch their breath.

Hermione sobered first, her giggles fading into a thoughtful silence. As Spencer regained control of his own mirth, she said, "I've never done this before."

"What, had a pillow fight that turned into a food fight that then turned into a water fight?" Spencer snorted. "You know, that's three things we can cross off our list." He grinned proudly. "...although, I'm not sure the food fight counts if only one side has the proper form of ammunition." He thought outloud.

"I think it counts." Hermione countered predictably, before addressing his original question. "And no, that's not what I meant, even if it's true that I've never done those specific things in that specific order either." She was quiet for a moment, seemingly trying to gather her thoughts into the proper words. Spencer sensed the somber shift in her mood and waited for her to speak in silence.

"I've never been… this sort of person," She said haltingly. "The sort of person who spends a whole day doing all sorts of ridiculous, spontaneous things like climbing trees and building forts and the like."

"I don't know if _spontaneous_ is the right word." Spencer commented. "We did make a list. _You_ made several." He grinned. Hermione didn't even respond to his teasing, still caught up in her train of thought.

"I said earlier today," She glanced at the wall clock, "Or rather, I said _yesterday_ that you weren't the first boy who accused me of not being fun."

"Yeah." Spencer remembered, then sat up a bit straighter. "Which reminds me, you said something about 'tall boys with messy hair and pretty eyes' that I think we should talk about -"

"Oh, please. Not now, Spencer." Hermione shook her head, but she was smiling a little so Spencer took the win and let it go (for now). "What I'm getting at is… I've never gotten to be fun with someone. I've never really gotten to _have_ fun, not for a long time… not until I met you." She said softly, and something began to shimmer inside of him. She sat up and turned to look into his eyes, and what he saw in hers made his breath stutter. "When I was a little girl, I was too smart and too serious for other children my age to enjoy my company. Despite my apparently _insane imagination."_ She said dryly. Spencer managed a smile.

"It was very lonely, but I preferred my books and my solitude to conformity and bullying." She continued. Spencer's chest ached at the businesslike tone that did nothing to hide her old pain that he knew all too well. He would have given anything for someone who understood him as a kid, but he would also sacrifice everything to have kept her from the same fate.

"I told myself that I didn't need other people; that I didn't need fun." Hermione was saying. "I just wasn't meant to have fun, fun was for children who didn't know how to read and weren't very smart." Her lips twisted in self-deprecation. "It's a horrid thought to have, I know, but arrogance is the salve of the insecure." She sighed. "When I went to boarding school, I made friendships and gained memories that I will treasure forever, but… I still didn't get to have fun." Her beautiful brown eyes were dark and conflicted with admitting things she had never allowed herself to give voice to before. "I spent all those years at school being afraid for my friends, for my family. I spent so much time worrying over them, that I never got to relax. And even though I know Ron and Harry and my family love me for who I am, books and all, they thought that's all I was. They also seemed to think I wasn't meant to have fun, and they let me worry and mother them for years with constant complaint," She said with a shake of her head, "But no real effort to take any of that responsibility from me."

Spencer frowned, imagining Hermione's friends as people who only used her for her intellect, and Hermione seemed to sense his offense on her behalf and quickly spoke up, "I will never regret or resent for a single thing I did for them," She said fiercely, "I know they needed me to be that person. I'm quite sure they would have died without me." She said bluntly, but without conceit. "But they got so used to being taken care of, and I got so used to taking care of them, that… it wasn't until years later," Her voice grew distant and strained, "when I found myself in a job and a relationship and a _life_ that had turned that sad, lonely little girl into a sad, lonely woman." Her shoulders trembled slightly but she soldiered on so bravely into her pain that the ache in Spencer's chest grew in response. "The whole _world_ had changed, and I had helped it change." Spencer didn't know the context for her words but he thought he knew what she meant.

"But when it was all over, the bottom line is _I_ hadn't changed at all." She said with a shift in her voice that Spencer knew meant she was coming to the end of her speech. "So… I left. I left my job, my friends; I left my whole life and came here to find not just a simpler existence, but a happier one. One where I could finally change and grow into the person I've always wanted to be. Not just the bookworm or the know-it-all or the mother hen, but someone who _loves_ and lives and _laughs_ loudly and often. Someone who is _happy_ and _herself._ " She said with blazing eyes and a bright smile, her words and entire being so full of emotion that Spencer could hardly believe how anyone could want her to be anything other than who she was right this moment, sitting on the hard tile with him, messy hair and wet clothes and with all her intellect and beauty and passion burning with a force that stole his breath and gave it back all at once.

Before he could attempt to put those feelings into words, she continued in a voice somehow stronger and softer than it was before. "Then I met you." She said eyes flickering down to where she had reached to take their hands, entwining their fingers and when she looked back up their eyes met at the exact time he felt her hands touch his. "And you…" She laughed, emotional and with trembling breaths, "Spencer, you make me so _happy."_ She said, the words a fearsome caress. "But it's more than that, you make me more myself than I ever was before, and you don't even know everything about me!" She said, sounding as wonderfully disbelieving as he had ever felt in her presence. "You reflect every single part of me and show me how to be exactly who I've always wanted to be, and show me how to do it because I've found that person in you. Spencer…" His name a crescendo on her lips, "You are my joy."

Spencer felt those words crash against him and wash over him and he had never felt so intensely complete and also so _unworthy_ at the same time. "Hermione." He began, not knowing how he could ever convey how he felt about her in such a way that could be even remotely adequate but knowing he had to try, "You… you're my joy too. I have a job I love, friends and family who love me, and I even have something like a purpose in life… a dangerous one. I have a dangerous life full of awful things and awful people, but someone has to do it and I know I can so I know I will." He said. "In some way, everyone in my life has been dangerous. I've also learned how to be less myself to be safe. At home, at work, in school, in the field… I've done what I had to do to survive. But Hermione, with you I feel like I have a _life_." He swallowed hard, but the next words that were the hardest he'd ever said came so easily when she was sitting there holding his hands, her heart laid bare before him. "You are quickly becoming my reason for everything, and it's kind of terrifying." They both laughed, brief and breathless. "It would be really cheesy and cliche to say 'you're my life' or, 'you're my reason to live' but it wouldn't be wrong." He said, his chest aching with the weight of his own words.

She took a shuddering breath, eyes full of something still left unsaid between them, but not unfelt.

Spencer continued, "Mya… Hermione. You deserve more than my awkward, stammering cliches," He gently squeezed her hands to stop her verbal protest, "So I will say this: you're not my reason to live, and you're not my life." He said, her face questioning but still open and soft. "I don't think anyone has ever understood me like you, Mya. They appreciate what I know and what I can do, when it gets the job done." He said without bitterness. "But when I'm not at work, even my friends and colleagues respond to me with eyerolls and dismissive headshakes, even if it's rooted in fondness." Hermione's face was awash with the empathy he had felt for her earlier.

"They joke about me being a robot, because teasing me is easier than trying to wrap their heads around how a human like me can exist." Spencer admitted, the words unearthing a hurt he had never allowed himself to feel until now.

Hermione's face was violent in its emotion. "Spencer Reid, you are more human than anyone I have ever met." She said with ferocity. "In fact, you are the _best person_ I have ever met." She said, and her voice was such he could not help but believe her.

He smiled slightly. "Thank you." He acknowledged sincerely before continuing, "You're also the best person I've ever met, because you are just like me and you are so completely human. Your brain and your heart are the biggest and strongest I have ever encountered and they both are so _you -_ you wouldn't _be_ you if one was less than the other."

She beamed at those words and it bolstered his courage. His voice strengthened. "Ever since I first met you, I was so drawn to you. I was also kind of afraid of you, at first." He confessed to her immediate confusion. "I had listened to people call me a robot for so long I started to believe it." He admitted. "I hid from my feelings in facts and theories; I told myself it was for survival. But you were so bright, you shone a light right onto all the feelings I hadn't thought I had the right to feel. After all, why does a genius need _feelings_ when he has an _eidetic memory_?" He scoffed, Hermione's heart breaking for him in her eyes. "But you looked right at me and it was like, 'of course you have a heart, of course you have feelings. Why wouldn't you?' and it was the first time anyone had treated me like that. Like I was a _person,_ no footnotes or prefixes or suffixes. Just a person. You saw I had a brain _and_ a heart... and - okay, this might also sound cliche and dramatic, but it was like you saw my soul, and now I finally believe I actually have one."

"Oh, Spencer." Hermione said lightly, as if she were reminding him of something simple he should never had forgotten. "You have always had a soul." Her face grew sharp with thought for a second before it relaxed in epiphany. " 'Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.'" She quoted.

"Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights." He supplied absently.

She nodded. "A dreadfully melodramatic book, but a cultural staple." She said. "I have always liked that particular quote, but never quite understood it until now. I too will not give you the cliche of saying we were 'made for each other' but I do think we were made the same. Made to be with each other, for however long we are." She smiled brightly at him. "We have both always had our souls, but I think only now are we seeing them for what they are, because we are seeing them in another."

And then, because there was nothing else that was needed to be said, Hermione kissed him once, brief but complete. Then she rested back against his side, hands entwined and hearts beating the same rhythm in different bodies.

* * *

After a period of time that was both endless and fleeting, Hermione looked at the clock again and lifted her head to look at Spencer and said,

"Let's take a drive."

* * *

" _Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field from a girl. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, and they parted with leaves in their hair.  
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."  
-Nicole Krauss, The History of Love_

* * *

 **Author's note: So, this was part one of Spencer and Hermione's Two Days Together. Hope you didn't get a heart attack from all the shameless romance. Fear not, angst will come!**

 **Please review :) I've gotten some truly lovely guest reviews lately, so a thousand thanks to whomever sent those, but all of your kind words and suggestions have kept me going from the very beginning of this story, even though I know it's been a long road. We're not done yet! So thanks for sticking around, and keep speaking up! I treasure every word.**


	12. Chapter 12

**DEAR READERS,**

This is not a new chapter, and I am so sorry about that. This is a quick memo to explain my absence. Months ago, my laptop broke and I have been without the means to get it fixed. My laptop has all of my story files and information on it. The only time I have enough computer access to write is when I'm at work, and I can't write during that time because I am obviously working. I've been trying to write bit by bit so that when I do get my laptop fixed I can begin updating without delay, but it's been difficult. There's also been some really tough stuff going on in my personal life, not to mention America's awful political climate, that has sapped my inspiration for writing.

Anyway, all of this to say that I have not abandoned my stories and that I dearly hope you guys haven't abandoned me either. Your continued reviews, follows, and favorites have been extremely touching and motivating. I hope to see you soon, with updates!

Sincerely,

StainedGlassSkyscrapers


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